As a rule, I don’t read reviews of films which I have not yet seen. I know that it’s the same for the vast majority of my colleagues. But I allowed myself to peek at some of the notices on Midnight in the Switchgrass and they were absolutely brutal. Savage.
Maybe it’s because the crime thriller sort of falsely advertises this as a Bruce Willis and Megan Fox feature, when the truth is that much more screen time goes to Emile Hirsch and Lukas Haas. Nothing wrong with that – they’re both solid actors.
But Willis probably spent more time on the photo shoot for the poster than he did in his very small role as a seasoned (but extremely low energy?) FBI detective. He and his partner, Megan Fox are looking for, as it turns out, the same suspect that local Pensacola law enforcement dude Crawford (Hirsch) has been haunted by and is working on.
Supposedly based on a true story, but more obviously based on, oh, every single crime thriller of the past 40 years, someone is abducting and killing prostitutes who work mostly on the truck stop circuit.
It’s not a spoiler to say that we learn fairly early on that Lukas Haas, sporting flannel and a trucker cap to go with his chicken-fried accent, is the killer. Unlike the weird loner cliche of movies like this, Haas’s character is a family man who genuinely loves his daughter and listens to Christian sermons on the radio. The film never gets much beyond his Jekyll and Hyde framework, so his motives for his carnage are left for the viewer to fill in (or ignore).
So, here’s where I will pull my punches: I am a sucker for the true crime genre and that extends to stories like this. It’s very easy to notice its flaws along the way, and even easier to look back when the lights are on and say, “well, that wasn’t great.”
But the plain truth is that you watched this potboiler without shutting it off because it kept your interest. That puts it a step or two above several other films I watched the past month.
So while it may be a blatant case of false advertising where the casting is concerned, Midnight in the Switchgrass gives you exactly what you expected from the genre.
2 ½ out of 4 Stars | Rated R | 98 minutes | Reviewed by Kyle Osborne| Watch Here
