AT ANY PRICE
Starring Dennis Quaid, Zac Efron
Directed by Ramin Bahrani
With an Iowa farm towns corn-fed residents filling the rickety stands for a stock car race, The Star-Spangled Banner plays over tiny speakers.
Director Ramin Bahrani cuts between his characters, revealing each to be singing in a different untuneful key.
Alas, while cleverly staged, a scene intended to illustrate the discord in the community, instead proves emblematic of a film hampered by its wobbly tone and unharmonious performances.
The driver that everyone has come to see is Dean Whipple (Zac Efron), who has a legitimate shot of breaking into the NASCAR circuit.
Achieving this goal would also free him of the family farm and accompanying business which is ruled with an alternately glad hand and iron fist by his dad Henry (Dennis Quaid). (That his avenue of escape from cyclical drudgery involves racing around in circles is an irony lost on Dean.)
Meanwhile, Henry finds his unscrupulous business practices concerning the sale of genetically-modified seeds coming home to roost.
In previous films like Goodbye Solo, Bahrani has told remarkably contained stories that are character-driven rather than plot-heavy.
Perhaps inspired by the expansive plains that feature so prominently here, he allows his story to sprawl out until he no longer has a firm handle on it.
Furthermore, Quaids affected performance deprives the film of the naturalism it clearly aspires to. Perhaps understanding that hes fighting a losing battle, Bahrani abandons the slow motion tragedies of dying industries and withering dreams for outlandish developments that see At Any Price devolve into precisely the sort of contrived nonsense that his earlier work was antithetical to.
