Rob Reviews "Tow"

Rose Byrne continues to show how she is one of the most underrated actresses of our time. Sure, she’s got some hardware to add to her resume, but she is not getting the starring vehicles I believe she deserves on a larger scale and more consistently.  (For the record, her husband does not play into any bias here.  If you listened or watched the show, you know where I am coming from here.)

In Tow, she plays Amanda Ogle in the true story of a woman who lives in her car in Seattle as she tries to get her life on track after a divorce.  She and her aspiring cosplayer of a daughter, Avery (Elsie Fisher), are very close, but Amanda doesn’t want her to know here situation.  When her car is stolen after a job interview and then found and sent to a local tow yard, Amanda faces an enormous bill to get it back that compiles by the day and finds itself in the five-digit category.  Unable to pay the fees that keep compiling, she winds up in a church’s homeless shelter and decides to take on the tow company in court to get her car and her life back.

Based on a true story (that has a nice moment before the credits roll, even though it may have lingered a bit longer than I thought it should have), I found myself rooting for Amanda and riding with her on the ups and downs of her story.  As great as Byrne continues to be, the supporting cast here does a fantastic job to enhance this story as well.  From Dominic Sessa as the non-profit attorney that wants to help her fight a large law firm to Octavia Spencer as the case worker that runs the shelter to Demi Lovato and Ariana DeBose as her friends at the shelter to Simon Rex as the guy working at the tow yard that wants to show her mercy (and does to an extent) and even Corbin Bernsen as the lawyer representing the tow yard, this is as close to an ensemble piece as it gets without actually being one.

Director Stephanie Laing (Your Friends and Neighbors, Palm Royale) does a fantastic job taking this story and conveying it in a way that grabs a hold of the audience and doesn’t let go until the end titles roll in a way that I wish more filmmakers would do, especially with true stories.  Giving each of these characters meaning within the story without letting those characters step too far into Amanda’s is a delicate balance that she walks like the professional that she is.  This is more about Amanda herself than her taking on Big Towing, and honestly that is what it should be.  If it were simply about the case itself, Tow would find itself getting lost in the “legal drama” shuffle whose scripts are stronger in that category.  Making this a human story sets it apart in the right way and also makes it more relatable to a larger audience.

Tow is a film that at a minimum needs a limited re-release towards the end of the year to keep it fresh in the minds of both critics and awards voters.  This is all of the things when it comes to performance, presentation, and emotion that should be noticed and recognized.