KYLE GALLNER AND SAMARA WEAVING IN CAROLINA CAROLINE

TRAILER

That doomed criminal lovers thing again

He walks into her Texas gas station. She likes the con job he performs there and runs out after him. She and he fall hard for each other. Bingo: Bonnie and Clyde. He shows her the tricks of his trade. The money-cons at rural pay stations move to shoplifting department store robberies and then - with too little fanfare - jump up to robbing local banks. She does the robberies in a black wig waving a cowboy pistol. He drives the getaway car, often changing cars and license plates. They run through some states of the Southeast, soon getting noticed.

First off Caroline wants to look up her mother in South Carolina, who abandoned her in Texas when she was less than a year old. Kyra Sedgwick in a dive bar does a gritty impersonation of this sleazy lady, but her scene lacks any particular distinction despite being "in character" and hence seems unnecessary, a failed opportunity.

This is a period-lite film, in the past but only thirty years or so back. In that way, it lacks flavor. Its flavor is of a music video, and it is full of twangy, lilting country songs that fit just right. It's full also of montages, way too many of them. They suggest the director, Adam Carter Rehmeier, was either not fully at ease filming action for the robberies, or simply faced the restraints of a tight budget and short shooting schedule. This makes the movie seem pretty, but empty, where the hard crime scenes that are the center of the narrative come in.

On the other hand, what all concede is that the stars shine. Carolina Caroline foregrounds horror actors Kyle Gallner as Oliver, the, sly, mysterious young itinerant con man, and Samara Weaving as Caroline, the Texas blonde who's beautiful and reckless enough to follow him. As anyone can see the actors are having a great time and their chemistry is great.

Caroline has never been anywhere and her first aim is to get out of town, leaving behind Jon Gries, as her father, who, though he's played many roles, for me has his own edge of a much smarter con man, since he recently played Greg Hunt in the terrific HBO satirical comedy-drama anthology series The White Lotus, who gets himself half a billion dollars without doing anything violent himself, only by proxy bumping off Jennifer Coolidge. You kind of wonder why in the late twentieth century, even if they don't have computers and AI yet, this criminal couple hasn't updated the Bonnie and Clyde MO. I guess the director and his writer, Tom Dean, just consciously want to pay homage.

But while this movie sings when Gallner and Weaving are interacting, the overall structure of Carolina Caroline can't stand comparison with the iconic 1967 Arthur Penn film starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, which, after all, got ten Oscar nominations, while this won't be likely to get any.

That's not to say it lacks good scenes, or that I didn't feel Caroline's fear and terror when she and her lover get in too deep and the law is closing in on them. I remember a scene where Caroline and Oliver dance in a twangy roadhouse again, with their images appearing on the TV up above the bar, and she asks if they can hide out in France and he says yes and starts to cry. The actors bring more than the script calls for all the way through.

Carolina Caroline, 105 mins., premiered Sept. 5, 2025 at Toronto, showing at a half dozen US festivals including Cinequest and Miami. US theatrical release by Magnolia Pictures Jun. 5, 2026. Metacritic rating: 77%.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.