Rating: 

The Info

Directed by: Morgan J. Freeman
Written by: Morgan J. Freeman
Starring: Brendan Sexton III, Casey Affleck, Kate Hudson, John Heard, Sara Gilbert, Christina Ricci, Michael Ironside
Produced by: Michael Burns, Nadia Leonelli, Andrea Sperling

The Nutshell

A young actress and her father get stranded in a dead-end town during a chemical spill.

The Review

    All kinds of things can happen when you enter a small town. You can get trapped by strange, deadly children (Village of the Damned), watch your car get wrecked by a sadistic mechanic (U-turn), heck, you can even fall in love (A Walk in the Clouds). With all of the possibilities inherent in a "stuck in a small town" tale, it amazes me that writer/director Morgan J. Freeman wrote a story where absolutely nothing of interest happens. Nothing. A young sitcom actress and her father get stuck in Baxter, a town with a population of about 10, when a chemical spill blocks the only road out of town. Do they get in any misadventures or change the lives of the people around them? No, they just get friendly with the locals and then leave when given the all-clear. Ya-hoo.

    This is a "talky" film, and for some people, that is enough warning to stay away. Baxter consists of about five buildings, plus a burned down motel which provides a bit of intrigue. The populace seems to be made up of seven young adults, two adults, and two sheriffs. The young'uns sit around, play Space Invaders and drink beer, with the occasional controlled explosion coming from pyromaniac Eli (Ricci). Blue Baxter (Sexton) maintains the parts to a water park that his late father had begun building but never finished (the town is in the desert, and his father had planned to use the water from an aqueduct, which was unfortunately bought by Empire Cola, the nearby plant). Pete (Affleck) is an ATV racer, and knows no other talent. You would expect their lives to be changed by the arrival of Skye (Hudson), but no such luck. Skye naturally is drawn to Blue (blue skye, get it?) and her Americana-loving father (Heard) takes a bunch of pictures of The World's Largest Ice Cream Cone, the town's claim to fame.

    To Freeman's credit, he nicely captures the life of a dying town. Life is a repetitive bore for Baxter's inhabitants, and they are so numbed by their monotonous lives that they don't even think of leaving until they can't. The FBI, led by Agent Bellows (Ironside) quarantines the town until the chemical spill is studied. The locals are greasy, impolite and unkempt, yet no one cares. One can see just such a way of life in countless former mining towns across America, where there is nothing left to give the town a focus. The problem with Desert Blue is in the lack of a climax. A couple of slightly interesting things happen (one person gets shot, for instance) but the film has no point. Freeman could have ended the film at any number of different moments without sacrificing anything, so unimportant is his tale. Every character leaves the way they came in, and the credits roll. This film is a dud.

Copyright - Tim Chandler

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