Wander, the review of the film available on Prime Video

Arthur Bretnik, once a police detective, has become a conspiracy theorist following a dramatic event involving his family and for which he feels directly responsible. Her investigation into an unsolved murder in fact they had attracted unwanted attention to him and the ones who paid the price were his daughter, who died, and his wife, who suffered serious neurological damage.

Now the man hosts a pirate podcast, broadcast from the middle of the desert, together with his friend Jimmy Cleats, in which they denounce alleged cover-ups by the government. One evening the mother of a Mexican girl calls them, killed in cold blood while he was on the run near the town of Wander. The woman hires Bretnik to investigate: the man is not only enticed by the reward of ten thousand dollars, but also by the possibility of obtain new information about that case that cost him so much years before…

The truth is out there

A couple of conspiracy theorists dealing with a complex investigation where reality and fiction mix, secrets and lies, under the banner of a premise that does not want to take anything for granted. In certain passages, (over)powerful references to a key series of modern television emerge, namely thatThe X-Files that has enthralled so many viewers over the years, introducing them to conspiracy theories which then over the years have become increasingly prevalent, unleashing negative influences on the most conditionable minds. Anyway Wander he knows what he wants to tell and stages it with a certain personality, managing to insert it into the narrative substratum correct mystery atmospheres and that necessary dose of thematic tension, with a staging that manages to withstand the shock wave of a fascinating but at times risky and admittedly chaoticas in the final half hour where the editing choices risk confusing the viewer only to then find their center of gravity again.

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Sense of Wander

The locations in the desert of New Mexico, barren and desperate, are the best stage for this story that showcases the desperation of the last and the migratory emergency, citing the entry of individuals in search of a better future as a new workforce for more or less shady purposes, a mirror of realities often hidden from public opinion, this without going into conspiracies or not. It must also be said at the same time that the outline of secondary figures is however limited, given that the protagonist moves in these places forgotten by God as a sort of invisible ghosttrying to extricate themselves from false truths that become more and more complicated, leading the public itself to try to understand what is actually happening and how real or fruit of imagination and a consuming obsession.

Minds and faces

If the operation works even in spite of its exacerbated narrative limits it is thanks to gritty direction and truly spot-on casting. Behind the camera we find the Canadian April Mullenwhich despite coming from a very different film like the LGBT erotic drama Below Her Mouth (2016), and which manages to shake the various souls of a story that is not simple, at times repulsive but never boring and full of twists, especially in the excited series of revelations and reversals the final. In front of the room we instead underline the presence of Heather Graham in a secondary but fundamental role, of a Tommy Lee Jones who shows off all his skills – wrinkle after wrinkle – and, above all, of a revenant Aaron Eckhart: his detective tormented by nightmares and visions is unexpectedly the result of a captivating dramatic construction, the perfect vehicle for the atmosphere of a film certainly divisive but one that does not go unnoticed.