If there is a lesson that Seattle resident Amanda Ogle (Rose Byrne) learning over and over again in “Tow“It is sometimes when it rains. A veterinary technician with a history of alcoholism, each of her attempts to turn her life around ends with producing a new obstacle. But it struggles to maintain a relationship with her teenage daughter who lives in Utah, but only gets to see her when she can get a new obstacle. But it is difficult.
Her problems cross each other in a way that ensures her entire life revolves around her Toyota Corolla in 1991. The Beat-Up car is her only way to visit her daughter, her protection against the elements on cold nights, and when she finds work that does pickup for a veterinary service, her way of earning a income. And when it is stolen during a job interview, the existence she already collapsed to stick together overnight.
It is not long before the stolen car is found, but it is taken to a seizure that asks her to pay hundreds of dollars to pick it up. It is more money than she has – and she does not see why she is accused of being a victim of a crime – but the towing company’s employee (Simon Rex) reluctantly says that it is a business policy and there is nothing he can do.
The rose is unwilling to take the news that settles and begins to strive for legal alternatives. She submits a movement to sue the towing company and represents herself at a hearing that she stops winning when the company rejects to emerge. But the company will soon respond with a series of complicated legal maneuvers that place her on the hook for a bill of $ 21,000 to one of its subsidiaries. She refuses to give up, even when she bounces between shelters (one of which is driven by an anti-adding hardliner played by Octavia Spencer), relapses to drink and becomes strange from her daughter over her lack of visit. She eventually accepts the help of an idealistic young lawyer named Kevin Eggers (“Holdovers” crime Dominic Sessa), which leads her through what remains of a 369 -day legal struggle to get her car back.
Based on a true story (and boasts with the real Amanda Ogle as an executive producer), “Tow” presents himself as both a story about a woman’s endurance and a look at the ways that the bureaucratic gears in American society can inadvertently synchronize to work against an individual. While some of the supporting characters come across as one-note, Byrne Amanda embodies with endless amounts of courage and a deep sense of personal pride, even when she navigates her own demons and a world that just wants her to disappear. And she not only struggles with her own financial accidents, as she is also forced to deal with the opportunity costs to have most of her waking hours taken by paperwork and other bureaucratic tasks. Whether she tries to get her car back, run around and look for protection with an open bed and convince her operators that she meets their specific set of requirements or tries to find a bench to sleep on without upsetting the social hierarchy of other people living on the streets, her time is always filled with tasks that are both unproductive and inevitable.
With “Tow”, the first time director Stephanie Laing has made AA a simple, message -based film that is mainly interested in making its viewers more empathetic about the daily struggle that people living in poverty. To achieve this purpose, it sometimes paints the world with a cartoon a simple brush – warehouse characters like the rich business lawyer that takes all their calls from Country Clubs and Bougie Gym while talking about his preferred Safari destinations does not win film All points for shade. And its depictions of addicts who live on the streets and offer to buy main sleeping benches for blowjobs will be dangerously close to being a crass poverty.
But even with the narrative deficiencies, it is difficult to dispute that the film has good intentions. There are plenty of Amanda Ogles in the world that are about unthinkable bureaucratic stress just to get through the day, and maybe “towing” will make someone a little friendlier for one of them.
Rating: B-
“Tow” premiered at 2025 Tribeca Film festival. It is currently seeking US distribution.
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