Movie Review: ADOPT A HIGHWAY (2019)

First time when I read this movie's plot, it immediately got my attention because the topic seemed very interesting. In addition, I saw that Ethan Hawke was starring so my hesitations about if I should watch the movie or not was gone. I love Ethan Hawke since I watched Before Sunrise, which is one of my favorite movies.

The plot of "Adopt a Highway" is very promising: a 23-year-old young man is being sentenced to 25 years in prison because of a ridiculous law in the 1990s in California about carrying marijuana, and Russel Millings (Ethan Hawke) was caught carrying 30 gr of marijuana then. This resulted in him spending almost all of his adult life in prison and when he is finally out in his 44, he finds the world quite different than what he knew. Nobody is sending mails. There is now the internet and e-mails. His parents already died when he was in prison. He finds himself quite alone and hopeless during his first times out.

However, he happens to find an abandoned baby inside of a dumpster one day in the backyard of the fast-food restaurant where he works. He takes the baby with him and takes care of her a couple of days. Later, he learns that keeping abandoned babies is counted as kidnapping. Despite unwillingly, he gives the baby to police when he founds at that keeping baby is a crime since he is scared that he would be found guilty again and forced to go back in jail.

Without giving too much detail on the movie, I'd like to write my thoughts on it. I 'd say I really enjoyed the movie. Ethan Hawke's performance is so outstanding that I had goosebumps watching his silent and hopeless manners. However, you expect so much more from a movie that has such a deep plot and such an acting performance. I mean, "the journey of a hopeless ex-prisoner with an abandoned baby."

No, the movie doesn't meet your romantic expectations. Instead, it is following such a realistic sequence of events that it leaves you with bitterness and disappointment, just like real life does. You expect that Russell would run with the baby and the two would have an amazing life together, but no, it doesn't happen. Everything happens just like it would be in real life, and I think this movie's beauty is in its realistic and simple approach to its plot.