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Max Hopely (Rich Miller) is an average high school English teacher. As most English teachers secretly are, he’s also a writer who intends to write the "Great American Novel."
During a normal day, he’s interrupted from teaching by an old friend who wants to take him out to meet some chicks after work. As the two women in question are kindergarten teachers, Max is hopeful of being able to click with them and agrees to the meeting. Unfortunately, he initially strikes out with his date, Michelle (Drea Hoffman), who seems completely bored. However, when his buddy gets Michelle to try a drink called a Shaved Beaver, she becomes an enthusiastic party monster. After a hectic night of dancing, Max takes her back to her place for a nightcap and a romp on her kitchen’s island bar.
Their relationship progresses from there, with Michelle growing both more physically obsessed and dysfunctionally codependent as time passes. Then, one day Michelle tells him that she needs to go back to her home town of Reno, Nevada with her sister to catch up with some friends. Max figures he will use the time to catch up on his writing and bids her a safe journey. However, the day of her journey, her sister backs out and she asks Max to come along instead.
He agrees and they head out toward Reno. Everything goes well until they pull into a gas station and pick up a strangely helpful hitchhiker. As is so often the case, helpful hitchhikers turn out to be big trouble and Wally McGinty (Jim Rizor) is no exception.
Recently released from prison, Wally needs to be taken out into the desert and won’t except no for an answer. From here, Max is dragged into a network of crime and chaos that will risk both he and Michelle’s life and will somehow make its way to the barren stretch of highway known as Ocatilla Flat.
Content
While the overall story behind Ocatilla Flat is not the most original ever constructed, bearing direct homage to a number of different crime/suspense movies I’ve seen, it does a good job of keeping you interested. As thrillers are often the hardest things to set up so that they are logical, Ocatilla Flat does a pretty good job. This is largely due to characters that are designed to be a little outside the stereotypes seen before. For example, Max, who would stereotypically be the quick-to-panic school teacher, is actually able to cope with the crime and chaos around him quite level-headedly for the most part. Additionally, as he gets pulled into the web of crime around him that requires him to try to save his and Michelle’s life, he is constantly trying to figure out how to outsmart the cops. Clearly an avid CSI watcher, he’s bound and determined to destroy and/or cover up any evidence of his whereabouts or his doings. His studies of literary crimes, like the one in Poe’s Cask of Amontillado, also give him an interesting perspective and a canny way of looking at the world around him that is interesting and unique.
While some of the acting of the characters really walk the line of being believable, especially Wally McGinty, who just seems a little too overly-chatty for a prison-hardened criminal, the main characters are pretty believable throughout. Possibly the most surprisingly believable character is Wally McGinty’s hyper-zealous brother, Eugene McGinty (Noah Martin), who often engages in bizarrely extended monologues about trust and blowjobs that somehow make a strange sense in the context of the movie.
The ending doesn’t need much comment or repair, for the simple reason that it isn’t broken. For all intents and purposes, it simply works. This is high praise for a thriller. Director Nils Myers has set up a character whose personality and habits fits nicely with the ending, so that there is a good unity between the build up and the conclusion.
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