Don’t Let Go (2019) OTL Releasing/Drama-Thriller RT: 103 minutes Rated R (violence, bloody images, language, drug material) Director: Jacob Aaron Estes Screenplay: Jacob Aaron Estes Music: Ethan Gold Cinematography: Sharone Meir Release date: August 30, 2019 (US) Cast: David Oyelowo, Storm Reid, Mykelti Williamson, Alfred Molina, Byron Mann, Brian Tyree Henry, Shinelle Azoroh. Box Office: $5.3M (US)
Rating: *
Here we are, once again, at the end of another hot summer. As the last wave of summer movies comes crashing on the shore, we’re left to sort through the flotsam and jetsam to see which ones, if any, have value. Traditionally, Labor Day weekend is a “Dump Week”. Studios, knowing that most people will be heading to the beach instead of the multiplex for one last weekend of summer fun, unload movies they know are terrible with the hope that their terrible movie is less terrible than the others and will make a little bit of money before being bumped by the first of the big fall releases (It: Chapter Two opens this Friday).
At the bottom of the list this year is Don’t Let Go, a dull thriller that begins with an intriguing time-shift premise that gets pushed aside for a predictable whodunit involving drugs and dirty cops. Sadly, this movie’s problems aren’t limited to dullness and predictability. There’s also the issue of stupidity. Most films, especially those involving alternate timelines, require a certain amount of suspension of disbelief. You’re asked to accept the unacceptable without question. HOWEVER, there’s a right way and a wrong way to go about this. Back to the Future and Frequency are two perfect examples of the right way. Both films are intelligently written which make the unbelievable believable. Almost everything about Don’t Let Go is wrong. Not only does it not give you a sound reason to accept the premise, it’s filled with plot holes big enough to be seen from outer space. To quote Shakespeare, it’s a tale told by idiots.
The plot, such as it is, involves a homicide detective named Jack Radcliffe (Oyelowo, Selma) investigating the apparent murder-suicide of his 11YO niece Ashley (Reid, A Wrinkle in Time) and her family. Jack and Ashley are close; he’s a father figure to her. Her own father (Henry, Child’s Play) is bipolar and a recovering drug addict. He and Jack recently had it out over this neglectful parenting and it initially seems he wants to change his ways. Then Jack gets a call from Ashley begging for help. By the time he reaches her house, she and her family are dead.
Of course, it’s NOT a murder-suicide. The box of drugs under the dad’s bed is a clue that the other cops have either overlooked or ignored. But that’s not the weird part of the story. About two weeks after the incident, an already distraught Jack gets a call from Ashley. Surely, it can’t be her, can it? He must be going insane. In any other movie, his sanity would be a major plot point. In Don’t Let Go, it’s barely a consideration. Once he determines she’s calling from two weeks in the past AND that changing events in her timeline affects his own, he sets out to solve her murder so she can prevent it from happening.
The obvious first question concerns the idea of fiddling with the timeline. Changing the past can adversely affect the future. It’s the biggest paradox of time travel. It never comes into play in Don’t Let Go even though we see first-hand what happens to Jack in his present/future when Ashley alters events in her past. What we don’t see is how it affects others although in order for that to happen. There would have to be others which brings up my next point. The killer’s identity is never in question partly due to the Law of Economy of Characters which states that no character is unimportant. In larger part, there is only ONE other major character besides John and Ashley. This person seems to be around a lot with no apparent purpose. This person’s behavior is suspect from the moment we meet [pronoun redacted]. Anybody with half a brain knows right away this person is responsible for the killings, an obvious cover-up for a larger crime.
The script must have resembled a slab of Swiss cheese with all the holes in the storyline. I’ll point out two that I find particularly moronic. When Jack gets the first call from Ashley, he goes looking for her phone. He finds it still at the crime scene. What is it doing there after two weeks? How did the cops miss what could be a crucial piece of evidence? It was right next to her body, for Pete’s sake. Next, how is it that an 11YO girl is able to find information that the police couldn’t? Okay, maybe it’s because the cops involved are of the dirty variety. But if that’s the case, why would they not get rid of the source of the information? It’s in an obvious place. If a kid can find it, so could any cop with any sense. I’m beginning to wonder if these cops graduated from the Metropolitan Police Academy (cue theme music please). They’re clearly incompetent.
The only good thing I can possibly say about Don’t Let Go is that Oyelowo and Reid try hard to make it work. Buried beneath the formulaic crime thriller is a potentially affecting story of grief and loss a la Frequency. What would you say to a deceased loved one if given the chance? If you could prevent their death, would you? At what cost? This should be the focus of Don’t Let Go but writer-director Jacob Aaron Estes (Mean Creek) fails to explore it in any meaningful way. Instead, he goes with a half-baked story that wouldn’t even pass muster on an episode of Law & Order. There’s very little in the way of character development as well. We really don’t get to know all that much about Jack as a person. All we really know about Ashley, besides that she’s a miniature Nancy Drew, is that she comes from a dysfunctional family that we never really see interact without guns pointed at them.
There’s no other way to say this; Don’t Let Go is totally pointless. It’s an exercise in tedium and missed opportunities. It’s slow, plodding and nonsensical. It makes less sense as it goes on. I can understand why it’s being released on Labor Day. Judging by its opening day grosses (it didn’t even crack the top 10 or $1 million), it might have been best not to release it all. Even better, they should have let it go before the first day of shooting. Never has there been a script more deserving of a complete rewrite than this one.
