In this thriller, the Australian actor Jacob Elordi tries on the tics of noteworthy American performers, from James Dean to Matt Dillon.
Apparently, some time in 1964, a professional ice skater and animal trainer named Dave Pitts, on the road with his chimp Spanky, picked up a young hitchhiker who was in the middle of a killing spree. The story of Pitts’s encounter with Larry Lee Ranes, whose brother also became a serial killer, was fictionalized in Conrad Hilberry’s book “Luke Karamazov.” That book is the source of “He Went That Way,” the picturesque feature directing debut of the cinematographer Jeff Darling, who died in a surfing accident in 2022.
Jacob Elordi plays Bobby, the nasty, brash killer. Zachary Quinto is Jim, the diffident trainer. Jim’s got troubles — a wobbly marriage, debt, bad work prospects for the chimp. Bobby is certainly apt to add to his woes, but the two bond anyway.
Elordi’s performance here lacks the discipline he applied to his work in “Priscilla” and even the wretched “Saltburn.” You sense the star of “The Kissing Booth” (2018) trying to test his wings and see how fast he can fly from teen-heartthrob status. But what comes across onscreen is ticcy and overbaked, though not ahistoric. Elordi seems eruditely conversant with the work of American male actors who played damaged (but cool) goods before him, one minute evoking James Dean with a cigarette draw, the next reminding one of Matt Dillon via a squint. His acrobatics don’t mesh particularly well with Quinto’s dry understatement.
But few things in this laboriously quirky picture mesh at all. Evan M. Wiener’s indifferent script feeds Elordi almost as much profanity as Al Pacino uses in “Scarface,” which is nearly twice this movie’s length. The best entertainment here is archival footage of the actual Spanky ice-skating. You have to sit through the rest of the movie to get to it, though.
He Went That Way
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
