Charlie Countryman

Studio: Millennium Entertainment
Directed by Fredrik Bond

Nov 13, 2013 By Austin Trunick Web Exclusive

In a drug- and grief-fueled haze, Charlie Countryman (Shia LaBeouf) is visited by the specter of his recently-deceased mother (Melissa Leo.) She has one, final piece of maternal advice for him: go to Bucharest. Having nothing left to hold him back, the directionless 20-something heeds the ghost’s vague instruction, and finds himself receiving more life advice from a fatherly Cubs fan on a flight to Romania. Through a series of unlikely coincidences—including several of the film’s most surprising twists—he finds himself in the arms of the man’s beautiful daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) and on the wrong side of her dangerous mobster husband (Mads Mikkelsen.)

Charlie Countryman is an odd nut, hovering between a Midnight Express-style thriller and a violent dark comedy. Director Fredrik Bond put together the right cast for this bizarro love story: Shia LaBeouf is great playing an unwitting, romantic doof, and Mikkelsen gives his unstable mob boss a sympathetic, tender side. (Evan Rachel Wood’s hokey Romanian accent manages to be minimally distracting.) The bit players are solid, too: Harry Potter alum Rupert Grint appears as a wannabe pornstar—with the nomme-de-porn “Boris Pecker”—and The Inbetweeners’ James Buckley play his enthusiastic, ecstasy-toting partner in crime. This could easily have taken a predictable, serious route, but Charlie Countryman’s bleak sense of humor is a pleasant surprise. Embrace the film’s brazen weirdness (and forgive its inconsistent tone) and you’ll find an off-kilter romance in the vein of True Romance or Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

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