Review: Jennifer Lawrence keeps ‘Causeway' nicely afloat
A pickup truck breaking down on the street turns into a blessing of sorts in “Causeway,” a new, gentle Apple TV+ drama starring Jennifer Lawrence.
She plays a military engineer recovering in her native New Orleans after a debilitating brain injury suffered in Afghanistan when her Chevrolet truck’s engine starts smoking.
By chance, she pulls into an auto repair shop and finds another damaged soul — a mechanic living every day with the guilt and the physical aftereffects of a car accident.
“Causeway,” directed by Lila Neugebauer with a straightforward honesty, sounds more manipulative and manufactured than it is. At its best, it’s a quietly affective portrait of unlikely friends hoping they can help each other make it to the shore.
That analogy fits with a film where water plays a crucial role. Lawrence’s Lynsey comes back from Afghanistan to clean pools — an odd sort of high school profession for a veteran soldier — until we learn she was a member of the Army Corps of Engineers tasked with building a dam when her convey was hit by roadside blasts. Remarkably, she wants to go back to war and as soon as she can: “I need to get out of here!” Read More...