One Paragraph Movie Review: Down By Law

One hundred and fifteenth film: Down By Law. Whenever I see a Jim Jarmusch film I haven’t watched before I clench a bit, not knowing if I’m going to be bored under the weight of artsy toss or swept into a calming, symmetrical, blues-soundtracked blanket of stark and gruff. Thankfully this one is the latter, and manages to turn a black and white prison escape into an almost irrelevant detail on the road to blokey friendship. This is a movie that can make a corpse in the back of a jaguar less interesting than a month-long game of cards. I had to look twice to believe it was filmed in 1986, too, as the styling is absolutely prescient of the early 90s, and although every woman in this movie is either nagging or simpering, the manliness is nicely bumbling, with a sprinkling of hoarseness, chest hair, and Tom Waits. Ugh, you can tell I’ve just watched an indie film, huh. I liked it. Three and a bit fugitive rotisserie rabbits out of five.