Sonya Walger, Hayley Erin and Tony Amendola star in writer/director John Rosman’s intense thriller.
Blood on her face, a young woman stumbles down a street.
Launching in media res is disorienting yet effective, as the young woman lurches into what is apparently her own home — there’s a photograph of her on a table, in the loving embrace of a romantic partner — only for her to see a strange man enter the house with a gun in his hand.
From this immediately gripping opening sequence, writer/director John Rosman next introduces Elsa Gray (Sonya Walger), who enters her own home, where she places a gun on a counter. Shortly she allows an unexpected guest, Raymond Reed (Tony Amendola), to enter, whereupon he gives her an assignment to keep the young woman from crossing the border, and to do it now!
Elsa accepts the assignment immediately, despite her evident physical challenges — walking with difficulty, with a limp — and is soon off, reluctantly taking a cane.
The young woman is Jessica Murdock (Hayley Erin), and she is desperate to flee north, come what may. She encounters several strangers along the way, who are uncommonly kind to the mysterious woman whose sheer desperation is bleeding from her eyes.
Her desperate trek is paralleled by Elsa’s determined journey, as she continually checks in with Raymond, who is supported by a bevy of workers who are somehow tracking Jessica by electronic means. Raymond continually presses his fellow workers and, especially, Elsa, to find her now and stop her! She must not cross the border!
Writer/director Rosman flashes back briefly at times in order to rewind recent events in Jessica’s life and eventually reveal the reason for her urgent flight. Together with events in Elsa’s life, which fill in the true nature of her health condition, the film becomes even more desperate and even poignant.
True, New Life is a slam-bang thriller; simultaneously, though, it’s also a meditation on the meaning of existence. And it accomplishes all that in less than 90 minutes, with terrific performances, a great script, very good direction, and excellent below-the-line craftsmanship. Highly recommended.
The film opens Friday, May 3, in select theaters and on VOD across North America via Brainstorm Media. Locally, it will open at Galaxy Grandscape (The Colony, TX).
Dallas Film Now. 