$5 a Day, the father-son road trip film starring Alessandro Nivola and Christopher Walken, begins and ends with Ritchie Flynn Parker (Nivola) and his girlfriend Maggie (Amanda Peet) figuring out if they have a relationship, and talking about Ritchie's Dad, Nat (Walken). It's a fairly standard way to give a film a sense of completeness, one that is often boring and feels simplistic, but here it delivers a measure of the reason it has become standard. In a film about figuring out who you are, while dealing with tremendous father issues, there's nothing like figuring out who you are to someone else, and why.
The film opens with Ritchie going through the motions of his job as a health inspector, but he's taking it very seriously. He draws his tools like weapons, and treats his food thermometer like a surgical instrument. He wields his flashlight like a scepter of station, and pounces on unsuspecting fume hoods. He radiates with the importance of his job, protecting citizens from germs and the unscrupulous restaurant owners that let them loose on the public.
And then he lets some violations slide, because if he doesn't a rather nice, old guy is going to be out of work.
That's a tricky character to make work, and before we get a chance to settle into him, Ritchie gets fired. Not for his performance, but because his superiors find out he served some time. More or less undaunted by his new circumstances, he returns to his small apartment to cook a special meal for his girlfriend Maggie. He intends to turn on the charm, and convince her not to move out, except she already has. But, he knows she has one more box to pick up, and he's the kind of guy who sees any window as a possibility.
Maggie has little interest in staying with Ritchie, though it's clear that she wishes she did. Two years later, she still doesn't know anything about Ritchie, and she can't take it anymore. The conversation might have gone smoother if Ritchie were at least his real name. It turns out that Maggie talked to Nat, who told her he had terminal cancer, and he might have mentioned a few things about Ritchie as well.
It's a setup we see coming every step of the way, and when it turns out to involve father and son embarking on a cross-country road trip, we expected that as well. Nat claims to have cancer, Ritchie doesn't believe him, but grudgingly tags along on the journey to New Mexico to get his dad to the experimental treatment. How could he not?
It's a story painted with the necessary elements of the world's smallest-time grifter, and the myriad issues that causes in the son he "raised," but underneath a very thin coating it is simply the story of any old father and son. An aging man looks around to find he isn't sure what he's been doing, and wishes he could say more about the kind of father he's been. A son struggles with what he can make out of the fact that he seems to be an awful like his old man.
The film follows the unique path along the highway that can only be experienced travelling with Nat. From free gas and promotional cell phones, to eating free at IHOP every day (and somewhat crime-ier crimes), Nat and Ritchie (well, Flynn) take a long drive along a road we all know doesn't involve any asphalt.
Christopher Walken has rarely been better, and his chore here is all the more difficult for the fact that his character is overloaded with familiarity and charged with carrying out events we know are going to happen. There is a scene, for instance, which finds Nat headed across the street toward a hotel to procure a meal, and we can't help but know exactly what's going to happen. We might have easily simply cut to the shot of him returning with the food. In most movies the several minutes we spend watching it happen would be unwatchable at best, and probably somewhat torturous. Walken manages to relay so much of his character, adding such life and depth, that you would watch it without complaint if it were twice as long.
Alessandro Nivola is equally compelling, even if he is often channeling Sam Rockwell, and manages to carry things off remarkably in a film that is almost exclusively forced play between Walken and himself.
Though teetering on the edge of becoming maudlin and overwrought, $5 a Day delivers on its theoretical lesson, getting the most you can with what you've got, and does so in fine fashion. Perhaps more powerful by way of not quite trying to be powerful, it worms its way into you in much the way Nat gets to people - not because you really fall for its lines, but because you let it.
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Special Features
The Blu-Ray and DVD releases aren't loaded with bonuses, and you probably aren't surprised by the fact. It gives you image galleries and the trailer, and beyond that there are only interviews with the director, Nigel Cole, and several cast members. But, they're better interviews clips than most. They smack of the film's lower budget, and we get to hear the stars discuss their characters, and the challenges of making them work, rather than just the thrown together blanket praise we so often get out of such bonuses. With crew walking around just out of shot (and not always managing that), you'll get a lot out of this treat.
Own it on Blu-Ray and DVD today!
Also available at iTunes here - http://bit.ly/5adayitunes
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About Marc Eastman
Marc Eastman is the owner and operator of Are You Screening? and has been writing film reviews for over a decade, and several branches of the internet's film review world have seen his name. His reviews have brought him personal praise from the director of a major motion picture, and have been used as required reading in a course at a major University. These priceless rewards, along with just bags of cash, keep him from straying from freelance writing. He is also a member of The Broadcast Film Critics Association and The Broadcast Television Journalists Association.
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