Causeway Movie Review

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Jennifer Lawrence is the absolute best thing about this movie. She gives it balance and ties you to a storyline that often goes off the rails when you need it to be straight with you. That said, her performances in “Silver Linings Playbook,” “The Hunger Games” and “American Hustle” proves she knows how to give what it takes to hold an audience. She’ll do that here, too, as Lynsey. Lynsey was involved in an incident in Afghanistan that gave her a severe brain injury. The damage also left her with post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD is a condition triggered by a horrifying event. The brain of the person who suffers from this disorder causes flashbacks, severe anxiety, physical difficulties and depression.

At the film’s beginning, we see Lynsey in recovery so she can get back to who she once was. She hopes her doctor will allow her to redeploy when she’s completely healed.

It’s a slow start, but Lawrence is complex and moving in moments when the script needs her to help wrap up a moment. Kudos also goes to her co-star Brian Tyree Henry (Bullet Train, If Beale Street Could Talk). He plays James, someone she befriends at an auto shop where she takes her broken-down truck. They strike up a conversation and, for all intense and purposes, find out that they both need something they can’t find without the other… companionship.

Lynsey lives with her mother, Gloria (Linda Emond), who’s out with a different man every night and never had any interest in caring for anyone other than herself. Due to her upbringing and disappointments in life, Lynsey has become aloof and distant. The relationships with her mother and brother, who’s now in prison, always came with ultimatums, requirements she couldn’t necessarily meet. Still, the compassionate and friendly James is there for her, no questions asked.

Here’s a person who wants to be close to her and doesn’t ask for anything in return. That said, he also knows how to alert her to the fact that it’s she who has been pushing people away. Lynsey allows others to take the blame for everything wrong with her instead of seeing how she may have compelled a situation to go badly. Now that she’s an adult, James wants her to wake up and stop protecting her ego. Where their storyline goes is impressive, but there’s one moment that’s hugely frustrating to witness because it’s not only unoriginal but redundant and unnecessary.

I would have rated the movie much higher had director Lila Neugebauer continued the story without using cliché to get through one of the most pivotal scenes in her film. I was disappointed by it and you will be, too. I’ll leave you to discover what that thing is.

Ultimately, this is a sweet story about healing and forgiveness, but very dialogues-heavy, which makes it feel slower than it actually is. Set in New Orleans, it’ll take more than a beer and beads to fix things that have suddenly come between these two buddies… or to fix themselves. Lynsey and James both escaped a tragedy in their lives. Hopefully, together they’ll get through it all.

CAUSEWAY IS OUT IN THEATERS AND WILL BE ON APPLE TV+ NOVEMBER 4th, 2022.