Maryland indie Andrew T. Betzer, whose shorts have been featured at Cannes, Rotterdam, and other festivals, makes his feature debut with this weirdo picaresque centered on a 20-year-old lunkhead, just escaped from a correctional facility, and his ten-year-old brother. After a prank involving a BB gun snowballs into the bludgeoning death of a teenage girl, the brothers hit the road, crossing paths with a promiscuous hotel maid, the chef who stalks her, and an Australian roughneck who collects Nazi memorabilia and takes part in Vietnam war reenactments. In the best tradition of Huckleberry Finn, both brothers are gullible dummies providing an entree to various American eccentrics, and like that book, Betzer’s movie (2014) is a crazy quilt whose regional charms obscure a ramshackle plot.
Young Bodies Heal Quickly
1 hour 42 min • 2014
