When taxi driver Long (Hiep Tran Nghia) reluctantly sets out to pick up a ride near the start of The accidental getaway driver, he has no way of knowing where the journey might take him. Even those of us in the audience well aware of the title may find it hard to guess. Because while the film begins as the gritty crime thriller suggested by the premise, it unexpectedly but effectively morphs into something much more tender.
From the moment we meet Long, it’s clear what kind of existence he leads. He is first seen alone in a shabby apartment, listening to an old CD that is so broken it hardly plays anymore. His neighbors can be seen and heard playing chess outside his window, but this aged, exhausted soul seems to have no place among them. When he gets a call for a job late at night, he grumbles, but finally gives in. Anyway, it’s not like he has anything more exciting going on.
The accidental getaway driver
It comes down to
Tight tension gives way to surprising sentiment.
His three clients, picked up in a dark corner, prove a little harder to pin down. Tây (a magnetic Dustin Nguyen) seems the most approachable of the trio – but when Long, realizing these men are up to no good, tries to kick them out of his car, it’s Tây who calmly raises his gun. From the backseat, Aden (Dali Benssalah) exudes a cold menace, while young Eddie (Phi Vu) sits silent and sullen. As Long learns from a TV news report, they are inmates who have just escaped from an Orange County jail, wanting to keep a low profile as they plan their next moves.
For the first half of The accidental getaway driverdirector Sing J. Lee (who also co-wrote the script with Christopher Chen, based on a 2017 film GK article by Paul Kix) raises the tension. Close-ups capture the fear that flashes through Long’s bespectacled eyes, and the details they pick up on – a bloodstain on the seat, a doorknob that could bring mischief or rescue, the red glow of a car’s taillight that illuminates the faces of Aden and Tây lights up as they argue out of Long’s earshot. And despite some early, half-hearted reassurances that no one needs to get hurt, Long’s terror is certainly justified; during a restless night in a motel, Aden promises Long a “quick, efficient” death with more than a trace of sardonic glee.
But things start to take a turn at the next motel, where Long, Tây and Eddie wait for Aden to return with the forged papers he promised will take them to freedom. As the hours pass, hostility and suspicion give way to sheer boredom, until the three Vietnamese men play games and chat. Long, who had rebuffed Tây’s earlier attempts at conversation with a curt “Should I talk to you?”, listens to Tây recount the path that brought him here over a shared cigarette. Tây admits to Long that he enjoys talking to him, even though Long only hopes that Tây will let him go.
Meanwhile, flashbacks and dream sequences, interwoven throughout the 117-minute drama, fill the blanks of Long’s life: his fading memories of an idyllic childhood, his traumatic wartime experiences, and the years since, his estrangement from a family that no longer understands him (literally – Long barely speaks English, and when he reunites with his children in America after decades, he discovers they never learned to speak Vietnamese).
“The machine ate him and spat him out, just like us,” Tây muses at one point, when Aden demands he explain his soft spot for the old man. And while some of the escapees’ justifications for their predicament ring hollow (“We’re living proof that sincere, nice people make mistakes,” Long would probably sound a lot more convincing if he weren’t literally being held hostage by the guys who turned to themselves. said That), The accidental getaway driver picks up on the parallels between Long’s predicament and that of his passengers. They are all men who are pushed to the margins by a society that would just as quickly forget them altogether – because of their foreignness, their criminal record, their age or simply the misery they carry with them. With a little compassion, Long begins to see it too.
It’s a testament to Lee’s confidence and his sensitivity that the shift from blood-curdling tension to heartfelt emotion works just as well as it does, though the transition isn’t without its casualties. While Long and Tây grow richer and deeper as characters, Aden and Eddie remain two-dimensional supporting players – and in Eddie’s case, flattened by an uneven performance. Meanwhile, the shift in tone is so thorough that any real sense of danger has been leached away by the final act. A climactic beachside brawl comes across as more superficial than cathartic, as if some of these characters have yet to realize that the plot has already left them behind.
But Lee earns the tear-jerking emotions of the final act by not overdoing his hand. The themes of family and belonging are deftly woven into the script. Nghia and Nguyen are given the space to grow their relationship organically, one small empathetic gesture at a time. It’s not hard to imagine the version of this journey that may have leaned too hard on its sentimentality, veering towards the allure of a tidy Hollywood ending. The accidental getaway driver continues its modest course and ends up somewhere more surprising, honest and ultimately more rewarding.