'KODACHROME'.......ANOTHER DYING OLD GUY HITS THE ROAD........

Kodachrome (2017)   It occurred to us, at one point, to do a post on independent filmmakers' never ending obsession with their favorite theme.....the Tragicomic Road Trip.......usually done with one of the road-trippers afflicted with cancer, paralysis, dementia or just garden variety eccentric old age......

           Don't worry. Sanity prevailed. We gave up the idea as too exhausting to write about........just reading the plot description of "Kodachrome" made us howl in anguish....("Dear God! Another one?")

           Since filmmakers will never let go of this trope until it's pried from their cold, dead hands......we can only judge each 'Afflicted Soul On A Life Changing Road Trip' movie by the quality of its actors.

            Mercifully, this one has a trio of gems.

            First and foremost,  Ed Harris as a dying legendary photographer who needs to hit the road for Kansas....... to take a few old rolls of undeveloped Kodachrome film to the last store on earth that's still processing them after Kodak discontinued the brand. (.....the very true situation which the movie uses to jump-start the story.....)

           Our second key player:  the never less than excellent Elizabeth Olson, playing Harris's home care private nurse.......charged with enlisting road-trip aid from Harris's long estranged son, a down-on-his-luck record producer on the verge of unemployment if he doesn't lure a hot band away from  their big record label.....

            And that brings us the film's major revelation....(cause we already expect Harris and Olson to do wonderful work)......Jason Sudekis as the embittered son, seething with a lifetime of anger and resentment toward his acid-tongued father, who was mostly absent throughout his childhood.....

            Sudekis doesn't just hold his own with Harris and Olson, he's every bit their equal in digging in to the very heart of the wounded soul he's playing......

           If you've seen at least one of the umpteen road trip movies, you know the rest........and nothing's out of place. Harris's character, an unrepentant bastard, spits out the expected stream of verbal venom at Sudekis, who volleys with wounding observations of his own......

             Olson, caught in this war zone, has a tougher job than a U.N. Peacekeeper as she falls into an awkward relationship with Sudekis......

              Of course there's no surprises here......the Dying-Douchebag-On-The-Road genre adheres to a pre-set structure as strict as Haiku poetry.  (If you can't easily figure out what's on Harris's precious Kodachrome rolls by halfway into the film, you must have been fast asleep.......)

             For this superb cast, we'll forgive "Kodachrome" for all of its carved-in-stone cliches and develop 2 & 1/2 stars (** 1/2).......with lesser actors, we wouldn't have sat through more than ten minutes of it......