On the surface, “Tow” is one woman’s story of perseverance in the face of overwhelming odds, but there’s far more disappointment than hope on display. There is character growth and narrative progression, sure, but the film lays on the adversity so thick and so often that it smothers its message and intention.
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“Tow” opens with Amanda Ogle (Rose Byrne) getting ready for her day in the driver’s seat of her 1991 Toyota Camry, which is both her vehicle and her home. Amanda’s answers to some basic job-experience questions at an interview later that day indicate that she’s fallen on tough times and may not be the most reliable employment prospect, but it’s clear she is trying. A Seattle resident with a teenage child and an ex-husband a few states away, Amanda is struggling to regain her footing in the famously expensive Emerald City and is momentarily optimistic after a different, successful job interview when her world comes to a halt.
Amanda’s car/home is stolen, and despite its recovery the next day, she learns it will cost $273.20 to get the vehicle out of the impound lot. This is money she doesn’t have, however, and the dispute over it kicks off a 368-day odyssey to recover not just her property, but also some semblance of justice. Along the way, Amanda must also confront some hard truths about her unhoused status, addiction history, and strained relationship with her daughter, Avery (Elsie Fisher), aiming for the recovery of something even bigger than her Camry.
The set-up is an interesting one inspired by the real-life struggles of Ogle, whose story largely mirrors the events in “Tow.” Byrne plays the part with a damaged yet determined energy that keeps the audience invested in each plot twist, including Amanda’s relocation to a women’s shelter, her budding friendship with fellow residents Nova (Demi Lovato) and Denise (Ariana DeBose), repeated interactions with sympathetic tow lot employee Cliff (Simon Rex), and connection with attorney Kevin (Dominic Sessa). None of these characters enjoys anything resembling agency or purpose outside of Amanda’s story, though, with “Tow” committing to repeat trips to the make-Amanda-suffer well instead.
What’s more, a viewer could be forgiven for losing track of the setting or any sense of time/place, as this is a Seattle movie in name only. The city’s weather, fashion, attitude, and social climate are fertile ground that could have nourished wardrobe, set design, make-up, dialogue, and lighting choices; yet there’s little consideration given to any of them in this regard. Longtime residents (and this review’s author counts himself among that number) can also attest to the ways different economic cycles have impacted Seattle’s homeless trends and car camping debates, yet “Tow” never establishes where in the city’s history this story lands.
For those not already familiar with the real-life details of the movie, it’s easy to wonder whether “Tow” is part of Seattle’s dot-com bubble burst, the ’08 housing crisis, Amazon’s late-2010s deflation, or the COVID story. These may seem like the quibbles of a home-towner with a locals-only axe to grind, but they illustrate a larger problem for the project: a lack of narrative identity. “Tow” is so committed to exploring Amanda’s misery that it leaves little room for anything else, leaving the audience without much to care about or identify with beyond the primary struggle.
Just as man cannot live on bread alone, movies cannot subsist solely on the dramatic fallout of their central conflict. And while “Tow” does clear out some time for Octavia Spencer as the shelter manager to establish some history for herself outside of Amanda’s story, the other characters and the world they inhabit are largely wasted. Not only is this Amanda’s story and Amanda’s alone, the script never lets a viewer forget just how awful the universe is to the woman, right up to the movie’s closing title card, where it delivers one final blow.
It’s exhausting and not a particularly good time despite Byrne’s valiant work as the beleaguered lead. Director Stephanie Laing and the script by Jonathan Keasey and Brant Boivin should be commended for polishing the story to present Amanda as a damaged and flawed person in a city that’s too often unforgiving to just that sort. Yet, their point is driven home to exhaustion and at the expense of the greater effort.
And for the Seattle crowd looking to see their city center stage on the big screen, this is yet another disappointing entry in the “this is supposed to be where, now?” movie catalog. There are more than just a handful of second unit shots in “Tow,” with Byrne clearly in Seattle for a couple of them, but this movie is far too sunny and yellow to have any credibility with the locals. Like Amanda’s fight against the system, “Tow” is facing an uphill battle on that front and many others, yet unlike the unhoused heroine of this story, it does not come out better for all the misery on the other side. [D]
Warren Cantrell is a film and music critic based out of Seattle, Washington. Mr. Cantrell has covered the Sundance and Seattle International Film Festivals, and provides regular dispatches for Scene-Stealers.com. Warren holds a B.A. and M.A. in History, and his hobbies include bourbon drinking, novel writing, and full-contact kickboxing.
