Redwoods Reviews

THE FLICK
Redwoods, the second directorial effort from writer/director David Lewis, buckles under the weight of good intentions and the infidelity story it creates.  Everett (Brendan Bradley) and Miles (Tad Coughenour) have been together for seven years and have a child in a sleepy mountain town filled with redwood trees as far as the eye can see.  When Miles and son Billy (Caleb Dorfman) travel to visit his parents, leaving Everett behind, he meets a stranger, Chase (Matthew Montgomery), who piques his curiosity.  The two have an affair over the course of a week which calls into question what Everett really wants: the drifting, adventurous life with Chase or a stable family with Miles and Billy?

Running a scant 82-minutes, the drama has no problem in raising tough questions about monogamy or long term relationships.  The problem it runs into is Lewis doesn't have the nerve to follow the storyline from beginning to end.  Vast swaths of story are left out of the finished product, pieces virtually demanding to be seen on the screen.  Pieces that, if one were to think about it, need to be explained to make Redwoods realistic.  What the film does well, at least initially, is create the Everett/Miles relationship in very short order.  The opening scene, in fact, is all the audience really needs to know about the two.  Everett, a boyish man (he's described in the deleted scenes as a 12-year-old who acts 40) lays on the opposite side of the bed from Miles, obviously older.  When Billy jumps into bed with them, Miles is almost taken aback, as if perturbed the kid is disturbing him.  Even later, there is no warmth between the two, only a list of orders and instructions.  Should Everett get the bigger garbage bags without a coupon?  The mold in the shower needs to be taken care of...and so on.  Theirs isn't the relationship most people would strive for, let alone call loving or functional.  Perhaps they've been together too long and Miles has forgotten how to be romantic to Everett.  Whatever the case, Redwoods doesn't care to answer the question, even at the end.

Why these two ever got together-and why they stay together-is anyone's guess.  An argument can be made that either their responsibility to Billy is the glue or the prospect of finding another mate in town precludes them from splitting up.  Fact of the matter is the script doesn't allow Everett's unhappiness to come through in any meaningful way.  He watches forlornly as Miles packs for the trip or as the door closes behind them without so much as a kiss or an "I love you."  In order for the audience to connect to the new relationship with Chase, the film has to put us in Everett's position.  Make us feel the lack of affection, the desperation, he feels.  Instead of showing a moment or two, use a montage or other device to show how this kind of treatment eats at a person over time.  In the worse case scenario, let Everett articulate these feelings to his mother or even Chase.  They bubble to the surface now and again but largely stay hidden.

There's another reason why the Miles/Everett coupling doesn't make much sense outside of what the movie doesn't show.  At one point, Everett mentions they've been together for seven years. The assertion is laughable at best when Bradley's casting is taken into context.  He's not a bad actor; his expressive eyes and cherubic appearance make him instantly sympathetic.  The actor simply looks too young to have been in a relationship for this long and have a child (Billy's status as an adopted or biological child is never addressed).  We don't buy it even for a minute.  Now, if Montgomery had taken the Everett role, the casting would have been more appropriate.  Montgomery and Coughenour are more age compatible, for starters.  Plus, it would make more sense that the younger Bradley has no real permanent home or "base of operations."

Redwoods excels, in one way or another, at asking the audience to buy into plot points in order to avoid asking the logical questions.  Does it make any sense for Chase and Everett to gallivant around the small town, especially when it is acknowledged Everett is risking his entire life to be with Chase?  Is Lewis trying to get the audience to swallow the fact no one is going to see the two of them together and then mention it to Miles in passing?  Either the filmmakers think the audience will be swept up in the torridness of the affair...or the script doesn't care about all the potential storylines it leaves dangling.  Further, Everett's relationship with brother Shane (Simon Burzynski) is murky at best, especially in light of a hot tub scene straight out of a porn video.  (A deleted scene puts their relationship in a better context, allowing this sequence and one later to make much more sense.)

It's as if Lewis was rushed to complete the script and get the actors on the set without completely thinking through each scene.  What does he want to say with Redwoods?  Well, there may be a slightly ambiguous message about a relationship being able to weather all sorts of calamities like a redwood tree.  Maybe an acknowledgment no one is perfect and all sexual orientation's make the same mistakes?  That to err is human and to forgive is...?  The problem with the last one is the film never lets the audience see the forgiveness on any level.  Everett and Miles never talk about Chase; Tess and Woodson (Everett's parents; Elinor Bell and Cole Panther) talk very little of their own infidelities.  The script seems scared to confront the endpoints to the story it has created.  By taking this tack, there is no sense of jeopardy, no consequences to deal with.  Instead of a "Five Years Later" finale, showing Miles and Everett working through their problems would have made Redwoods far more natural.

There is a certain charm to the film, to be completely fair.  Bradley is immediately likeable as a lead actor, garnering audience sympathy just by smiling.  When he and Montgomery share the screen, it's hard not to be drawn into the illicit love affair, discounting the logic gaffes in the story.  Lewis uses the "off the beaten trail" setting to his advantage, closing the couple and the townspeople off from the rest of the world.  And then there's the not so insignificant way Redwoods is gay-positive in every way.  No one bats an eye about who Everett is sleeping with; rather, they're more invested in whether he's happy or not.

THE LOOK
The anamorphic widescreen presentation isn't brilliant, especially for a current production, but it's not terrible either.  A layer of grain seems to permeate every single scene while various objects exhibit moire (or shimmering) effects in every locale.  Pixelation even comes into play when Everett and Chase walk in among the trees; the leaves show some blocking if you look hard enough.  The picture isn't as detailed as it could be, allowing minor details to go by the wayside and leading to a soft look.  Lewis uses a largely naturalistic color palette with plentiful amounts of brown, green and black, leading to a subdued-looking transfer.  

THE SOUND
An English 2.0 mix (no subtitles) is the only audio option on the disc and it does what it needs to do without much of a problem.  Full and clean, the track does a commendable job of combining the dialogue, ambient sound effects and score by Jack Curtis Dubowsky without one trampling over the others.  There is no distortion in either the high or low range.  There is a slight hiss in silent scenes coming from the speakers, though those scenes are few and far between.  Ambient sounds are recreated nicely, allowing the film to transport the audience to the interior of a forest or to the side of a river. 

THE STUFF
Packed in a black keepcase with no insert, Redwoods is split into a dozen chapters.  A generic TLA trailer, along with spots for Rock Haven, Chef's Special, Make the Yuletide Gay and Shank.  They are also selectable from the Special Features menu under the umbrella title of TLA Trailers. 

Fourteen deleted scenes (14:43) are largely superfluous to the film with the exception of one.  The third one, title Family Mechanics, provides necessary backstory for Shane and Everett, allowing their scenes in the film to take on a greater resonance.  Nothing else adds to the story, let alone fills in the missing gaps in the narrative.  A short piece labeled behind the scenes (1:29) is really two outtakes from production.  Homopop interviews Montgomery, asking him questions about how romantic he is (very) and which of his co-stars he wouldn't mind kissing again (Bradley, even if he's straight).  Seventeen photos (1:25) and the trailer (1:52) round out the disc.