Bruce Dern Stars in 'Northbound' Road Movie — SkimNews
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- Bruce Dern plays Arthur, an octogenarian expelled from his elder-care home for careening around its lawns in a golf cart alongside a sex worker and a bottle of tequila, in William Scoular's road movie 'Northbound.'
- Hunter Parrish plays Kevin, the grandson given brusque instructions by his distant businessman father (Dylan Baker) to put Arthur on a plane to a nursing facility, who instead agrees to drive him the 2,000-odd miles from Arizona back to Canada to reunite with his ex-wife (Joanna Cassidy) and his old small-batch whisky distillery.
- Julia Fox joins the trip as Adrien, a hitchhiker who turns out to be neither deaf nor an errant claims processor as initially presented; her real backstory gives her an urgent reason for needing to cross the border and reveals she can handle herself in a fight.
- The screenplay by Ashlin Halfnight leans on predictable intergenerational sparring and obvious needle-drops — opening with Trooper's "Raise a Little Hell" and closing with Keane's "Somewhere Only We Know" — making the road trip feel like "a familiar commute" rather than a late-life adventure.
- The reviewer argues the film sidelines Dern's "curmudgeon charisma" by reducing Arthur to "benign backdrop" for Kevin's "much blander hero's journey," leaving supporting turns from Baker, Cassidy, and the late Graham Greene (in a brief cameo) underused by a script that insists the least interesting character is the most important.
Why it matters: The review's central critique — that 'Northbound' sidelines its Oscar-nominated lead in favor of a blander protagonist — cuts against Scoular's stated ambition to honor a larger-than-life elder. With Dern reduced to "benign backdrop" and the late Graham Greene's cameo described as "too-brief," the film undermines the very curmudgeon talent it spent its budget to secure.
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