Adopt a Highway is a 2019 drama about an ex-felon who discovers a live baby left in a dumpster.
Inside a California prison, Russell MIllings (Ethan Hawke), has spent twenty one years for a drug charge that was his third strike, a ruling that left him in jail most of his life. Now free and in middle life, he’s back on the streets, unsure how to acclimate. Life has passed him by. Following the rules, staying in line for his parole, he gets a job doing clean up at a local fast food joint. Not long after, one night, while bringing trash to the dumpster, he finds an infant inside and in a panic, takes the abandoned girl with him back to his small apartment. He names her and decides to raise her as his own, but it’s a role he can’t keep secret for long, soon facing greater challenges than ever before, both legally and personally.
Anything about Logan Marshall-Green‘s traumatic Adopt A Highway begins with Hawke, an old mainstay in movies, who has made a career out of primarily staying out of big mainstream movies in favor of more character-focused titles, leaving behind a long list of performances that visit all ends of the spectrum. While Adopt A Highway certainly doesn’t have the commitment or focus it seems set up to deliver, Hawke is sensational, his earthy approach to acting again giving Russell great stake in this unusual story. He’s everything good about this movie.
We learn that Russell was a victim of a harsh law enacted during the Clinton administration, one that Marshall-Green (in his directorial debut) puts at the forefront for a long while, allowing Russell to be a tragic face of the deeply unfair ruling that locked up many for very small offenses. It’s untapped opportunity that the film embraces well in keeping the ex-con completely out of the loop in a world gone super tech. He not only doesn’t have an email, he doesn’t know how to use a computer. Think what a hurdle that must be.
The film shifts after discovering the baby though, Russell making some choices that are at best, unconventional, looking to be a caretaker for once in his life before coming to terms with his own familial past. It’s an interesting premise and both Hawke and Marshall-Greene’s screenplay work hard to make it convincing, even as it gets a little contrived in moments where Russell tries to feed and care for the baby slipping into a protracted comedy that doesn’t feel all that earned. It’s one of a few odd tributaries that don’t keep in step with the overall tone.
Either way, Russell soon confronts authority, such as the police, who become involved, revealing Russell’s own mental state and need for growth. Eventually, the plot puts Russell on a roadtrip to deal with his past, ending up on a bus where he meets an unstable woman named Elaine (Elaine Hendrix), herself a character worthy of a full length movie. This cleanly divides Adopt A Highway, where Russell seems on a minor odyssey of sorts, Marshall-Green more interested in the larger landmark moments of Russell’s adventure than the smaller defining ones. Accompanied by a slow and steady indie guitar and snare drum, it has plenty of authenticity and Marshall-Green offers his star enough room to build something special. Small and deliberate, this is a curious story with a couple of strong performances that does as it intends.