Director: Emanuel Hoss-Desmarais
Starring: Thomas Haden Church, Marc Labreche
My Rating: Liked It
I was able to catch this little independent flick at the Virginia Film Festival last November. Whitewash is about a snowplow operator (Church) who drunkenly kills a man on a snowy night. He proceeds to bring the body deep into the wilderness in order to buy him some time, sober up, and figure out what to do next.
Whitewash is one of the many movies in which the ride is more interesting than the outcome of the story. It turns out that the man Church killed had a prior relationship with him. As Church is buying his time and trying to scrounge up necessities in order to survive in the snowy forest, the movie flashes back every now and then to the relationship that was formed between these two men. It unfolds nicely and reveals an interesting story.
This film is very much a character study and it ultimately succeeds not only because of the strong script, but because Thomas Haden Church carries the film on his broad shoulders. I don't want to give away anything, but it gets more interesting than what I've said about the plot. And it puts Church's character in an interesting existential crisis as he tries to come to terms with what has happened.