Dreamland (2020)

Directed by Miles Joris-Peyrafitte. Starring Finn Cole, Margot Robbie, Travis Fimmel, Stephen Dinh, Kerry Condon, Darby Camp, (voice) Lola Kirke.

Dust Bowl-era crime drama misfire taxes patience and memories of its most obvious inspirations, most notably secondhand knockoffs of Bonnie & Clyde and Terence Malick. Cole is a hardscrabble dreamer, the teenage stepson of a small-town Texas deputy, and he happens upon an improbably glamorous bank robber (Robbie), hiding in his family’s barn with a gunshot wound. She catches his eye and gains his trust, so what are the chances the two of them will end up on the run together toward a less-than-idyllic end? Nothing you haven’t seen before, even those arty cutaway fragments that insist the movie isn’t just a run-of-the-mill pulp fantasy. Mise en scène rates above average, but the photographed images (replete with plenty of “golden hour” shots) are neither as pretty nor gritty as they oughta be, depending on which direction director Miles Joris-Peyrafitte was intending to go; the resulting confusion (and restless slumber it creates) might be the film’s most significant flaw. Premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival over a year before its limited commercial release.

40/100