Live Cargo has interesting and relevant topics somewhere in there, but director Logan Sandler chooses to magnify the wrong ones.
The film focuses on an interracial couple who just went through a tragedy, and, while in the process of grief, returns to the Bahamian island where the woman, Nadine (played by Dree Hemingway) grew up in. She apparently sort of grew up with the island's mayor (Roy). Lakeith Stanfield's character, Lewis, is uneasy in the island, and just wants to try to rekindle the flame with his wife. His wife is not quite ready though. The film spends most of the time with grieving Nadine.
The more interesting story line involves Roy, a man called Doughboy, and news of the increasing number of lost and/or dead bodies in the ocean shared via radio. With all this, somehow we spend a lot of time with this young man called Myron (Sam Dillon).
The film is difficult to get through. One reason is the consistently heavy tone with little essence to back it up. The director was also incapable of juggling all of these themes and story lines well. He spends way too long a time on the least interesting characters, thus spreading them too thin, and then leaving the more interesting parts unexplored and badly and/or too swiftly handled. I'm troubled with how the story about the couple ended, frankly: how we got there and how the filmmakers came up with that end point. It feels cheap and insulting.
The cinematography by Daniella Nowitz is one of the high points of the film. Some stunning shots underwater were my favorite. Lakeith Stanfield is always great, and still way underused here. The lead credit is misleading. Robert Wisdom and Leonard Earl Howze were fantastic.
The film focuses on an interracial couple who just went through a tragedy, and, while in the process of grief, returns to the Bahamian island where the woman, Nadine (played by Dree Hemingway) grew up in. She apparently sort of grew up with the island's mayor (Roy). Lakeith Stanfield's character, Lewis, is uneasy in the island, and just wants to try to rekindle the flame with his wife. His wife is not quite ready though. The film spends most of the time with grieving Nadine.
The more interesting story line involves Roy, a man called Doughboy, and news of the increasing number of lost and/or dead bodies in the ocean shared via radio. With all this, somehow we spend a lot of time with this young man called Myron (Sam Dillon).
The film is difficult to get through. One reason is the consistently heavy tone with little essence to back it up. The director was also incapable of juggling all of these themes and story lines well. He spends way too long a time on the least interesting characters, thus spreading them too thin, and then leaving the more interesting parts unexplored and badly and/or too swiftly handled. I'm troubled with how the story about the couple ended, frankly: how we got there and how the filmmakers came up with that end point. It feels cheap and insulting.
The cinematography by Daniella Nowitz is one of the high points of the film. Some stunning shots underwater were my favorite. Lakeith Stanfield is always great, and still way underused here. The lead credit is misleading. Robert Wisdom and Leonard Earl Howze were fantastic.