Two Ways To Go West is a 2020 drama about three men at a bachelor party, who discover their pasts are not all forgotten.
Gavin (James Liddell) is an actor in a slump. He’s just driven to Vegas to join his best friends Marty (Paul Gennaro) and Shane (Drew Kenney) for the latter’s bachelor party. There’s some history between them, including some animosity about Gavin’s choice to head to L.A., but the larger problem is the secret Gavin is keeping, that his sobriety, something Marty and Shane both respect, is breaking. Stuck in a hotel room waiting for a stripper, things begin to deteriorate and soon it’s not just Gavin’s drug addiction on the line but the future of their friendships.
Written by Liddell and directed by Ryan Brookhart, Two Ways To Go West is basically a filmed stage play, shot almost entirely in two rooms, a hotel living room and its adjoining bathroom, steadily closing in on the shadows of the past as Gavin faces a host of demons that add stress to what should be a raging party. In front of his friends, he slips off the wagon and descends into an abyss of anger and betrayal, one friend seemingly a life preserver and the other unwilling to play. But that’s only the beginning.
A fourth character arrives about half-way through, a stripper named Addy (Levy Tran) who walks into her own past, setting off a spark that triggers the real conflict as truths unspool the already frayed threads barely holding them together. In the aftermath, Gavin lets the walls crumble, and the film tracks that spiral while Marty and Shane contend with more than what they even realized lay between them.
This is a film built around its dialogue, barely a moment of silence finding place in the entire runtime, but when there is, it comes in surprising ways, such as when Gavin unleashes a torrent of pain at Shane just as the volume fades away, the words not important but the fact they exist at all reason enough. It’s a smart move, and forces us to see what is happening rather than listen to why. We don’t know what’s said but feel exactly what it means on the faces of those involved.
It’s moments like that, and others where characters share weight among them, that keeps this small film so desperately authentic. Driven by purposeful conversation, the story doesn’t entirely find new ground to trend upon, with infidelity, drug use, past indiscretions and more rounding out all the usual plot points. However, what’s impressive in all this is not how Brookhart and Lidell escalate these potential upheavals to conventional dramatic highs with extended emotional breakdowns and swells of orchestra strings, but rather hold them to small, intimate confessions with directed consequences that don’t need sustainable resolutions because, well, that’s not real life. These are men with hurt between that, and because it’s what defines them, holds them eternal.
These are all notable performances, with Liddell most impactful, a sensitive moment with Tran his best. He knows how to write dialogue, and while some bits might lose a little traction, including an exchange about pickles, it always feels genuine. Two Ways To Go West isn’t a big production though it is well-made and shot. And it’s in its earnest simplicity where it succeeds, delivering a decidedly small but impactful slice of life.