It shouldn’t sound like a compliment to say that Rose Byrne won’t likely be winning any awards for “Tow,” but there might be no higher praise when a generally fatal flaw in telling socially conscious stories such as the tortured tale of Amanda Ogle, whose life was upended by her car was impounded, is the feeling that they were made to chase trophies. If recognition was based strictly on quality, it might be a different matter when only a handful of actors could handle the absurdist comedy and drama inherent in its brassy broad’s real-life march to justice as deftly as Byrne does, but she and director Stephanie Laing, who first partnered on the Apple TV series “Physical,” are clearly after loftier and more admirable goals with the broadly appealing underdog chronicle of Ogle’s yearlong battle to reclaim her Toyota Corolla.
Although “Tow” leads with the seriousness of the situation that Amanda finds herself in, noting with a title card that she is among the one to three million Americans estimated to live out of their car, the film has a refreshing lack of pretension otherwise once you’re seated shotgun with its feisty heroine. Having a vet tech license without a college degree, it’s been difficult for Amanda to find work in the field she invested so much time and money into entering and beyond not having enough for rent, her child Avery (Elsie Fisher) lives a world away in Utah with their dad when it’s already difficult to support herself. Yet from the way Amanda sets up her car to sleep in at night or the hot pink attire she insists on wearing at all times, she is not someone to be pitied and even after her car is stolen and she’s unfairly faced with the fees incurred from the lot where it was impounded, the film opts for a vibrant score of eclectic instrumentation from Este Haim and Nathan Barr rather than pulling out the sad trombones when it becomes obvious that the fight for her home is going to be a lonely one, but one that Amanda would have no other way.
The fact that Amanda isn’t one to shrink from adversity was bound to keep “Tow” engaging no matter what, particularly with Byrne’s marvelous turn, but screenwriters Jonathan Keasey, Brant Boivin and Annie Weisman find plenty of perverse and infuriating details in the legal process that maintain a steady boil when an early ruling that Amanda’s car should be returned after the towing company doesn’t even bother showing up for trial leads to the discovery that the car has already been sold off and in spite of their internal evaluation that the Corolla is worth a mere $175, they are willing to spend endlessly to avoid admitting any wrongdoing. While there are certainly some exaggerations such as having the tow truck company’s top lawyer (Corbin Bernsen) answer calls from a country club, much of the narrative seems too strangely specific not to be rooted in reality both at the court and at the shelter where Amanda comes to stay during her lengthy legal battle, joining a number of other women who are on the wrong side of the poverty line but show how that can be only a matter of inches.
That firm foundation allows Laing to lean into Amanda’s larger-than-life qualities and a looser approach to the material than you might expect without ever feeling too outlandish, going so far as to surround her with the likes of Ariana DeBose and Demi Lovato amongst the downtrodden. (While their presence surprisingly isn’t distracting as one might think, the energy expended to supply them with storylines worthy of them can seem like a minor hitch when it takes attention away from the main narrative.) The director also gets the best of both worlds with Amanda’s tetchy relationships with the help that she is offered by both Barb (Octavia Spencer), who runs the shelter, and Kevin (Dominic Sessa), a young lawyer for a nonprofit that takes an interest in Amanda’s case, when a lack of faith in others and an insistence on being self-dependent can be seen as much as a key to her survival this far as it is a liability in ever moving forward. When empathy is a two-way street in “Tow,” the connection that the filmmakers forge with a little more humor than heartbreak seems more likely to disarm and even without wheels, “Tow” ends up being quite moving.
“Tow” will screen again at the Tribeca Festival on June 8th at 8:15 pm and June 9th at 2:45 pm at the Village East and June 15th at 8 pm at the SVA Theatre.