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CarriersThis reviewer has now seen Chris Pine play a lead role in three films, and on the evidence so far he's shaping up as one of the more interesting new stars out there. That's not especially to do with the quality of these three films, but the fact of his having chosen a wildly different genre and character type each time, and having consistently done all that he could with the part as written. He's the best thing in the film as the naive romantic lead in rubbish comedy Blind Dating, he silenced pre-release critics with a suitably arrogant young turk of a young Kirk in Star Trek. Now, in post-viral pandemic road trip horror Carriers, he's a grubby blue collar jerk in apocalyptic survival mode. It's no basis to crown him the new Olivier, but he's clearly into more than just coasting on his looks.
In Carriers, Pine plays boorish older brother Brian to Lou Taylor Pucci's sensitive Danny, whom he nicknames "Ivy League" - before the viral pandemic, Pucci's character had been destined for Yale. Now, the chalk and cheddar brothers and their respective girlfriends (one platonic, one actual) are on a road trip to the beach initially bearing superficial resemblance to any pre-college summer blow out. The motif "road warrior" spray-painted onto their obviously expensive car bonnet gives a first clue to the truth of their journey: they are on the run, their destination an arbitrary ideal, in a ravaged country.
Carriers, which has been gathering dust in the distributor's unreleased closet for a while now, has not been well served by its release date. Appearing shortly after the slick knockabout romp that was Zombieland, geeky Danny's "rules" on how to handle the infected feel hobbled at birth by the Jesse Eisenberg character's whip-smart take on the same. Released just a little while before John Hillcoat's none-more-bleak adaptation of survivalist tract The Road comes out, Carriers also feels like The Road: Spring Break Edition, the characters' rampant paranoia an ineffectual Cormac MacCarthy-ism Lite.
None of this is the fault of the actors or crew. Direction is split between the brothers who also wrote the screenplay, ??lex and David Pastor, and together with accomplished cinematographer Beno?®t Debie (Irreversible, Vinyan, Joshua), they do a superb job of capturing an empty Southern landscape whose wide horizons only emphasise how alone these people are. Shame they couldn't have reined in the here-is-what-you-should-be-feeling-and-when score which clunks all over the emotional highs and lows.
The dynamic between the four leads is well-handled, and the relationship between Chris Pine's Brian and his sweetheart Bobby (Piper Perabo) feels pleasantly real, while clashes with other survivors don't lack for tension, but it's nothing we haven't seen before. It's also a shame that the script demands that otherwise smart seeming characters behave on occasion like complete idiots for the sake of plot twists.
Carriers is well crafted, but it misses a spark of urgency that makes many a more flawed film a more gripping watch. Its function is closer to showcase for the talents involved than strong piece of cinema in its own right, but there's something interesting buried here in its depiction of the survival instinct's ultimate triumph over humanity that too few films in this sub-genre have the guts to play out.
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