Jeremy Summers (Ron Ben-Joseph) and roommate Martin Simm (Brian J. Lowry) decide to add a little excitement to their 20-something lives by stealing a car from a nearby university and joyriding to get some beer. Martin wants to be the one to drive the stolen car, but doesn’t know how to hotwire the vehicle. Since Jeremy knows how to get the car started, he makes Martin ride shotgun while he operates the vehicle instead.
Unfortunately, as he drives, Jeremy turns the wrong way down a one way street and forces another car off the road. Afraid that he’s killed the other driver, Jeremy runs over and gets in the passenger side of the car to see if he’s alright. The splatter of blood from where the other driver hit the windshield quickly confirms Jeremy’s worst fears. Once he realizes that the other driver is dead, he calls to Martin, but Martin decides that the best course of action is to run away as fast as he can.
At this point, a rather oblivious cop shows up and assumes that Jeremy was a passenger in the wrecked car and must, therefore, be a friend of the dead man. He passes this information to the man’s two sisters, Lori Dominick (Andrea Cochran) and her sister (Dannielle Reid). As the two sisters were extremely disconnected from their brother, they start trying to learn about their brother through Jeremy. Jeremy finds that he has no choice but to go along with this pretense until his guilt causes him to consider doing something terribly desperate.
The concept behind The Driver Rode Shotgun is an interesting one. What if you accidentally did something terrible and then had to misrepresent yourself to the people closest to the person you had hurt? It’s an excellent conundrum.
Unfortunately, as a working story in this film, it didn’t come together so well. There are a number of reasons for this.
The first reason was that most of the actors had very little chemistry with one another, making you feel as though you were watching a lot of uncomfortable strangers. While I’m sure part of this was intentional—because much of this tale was about isolationism—it failed to understand that, for a point to be made, there must be a counterpoint, as well. In order for us to see the isolation that existed between the two sisters and their brother, we need to see some connections between other characters. We at least need to see that Jeremy and Martin have a real connection, as they’re supposed to be best friends. However, the concept of them being best friends seems ludicrous, especially since, after the wreck, Martin chooses immediately to turn his back on Jeremy and even kicks him out of the apartment.
Further augmenting this feeling of awkwardness is that most of the actors seemed very uncomfortable with their lines, causing them to give very stiff and unconvincing performances. This could have been because they didn’t have enough time to really own the material through memorization, it could have been because the camera caused performance anxiety, or it could have been because the director was asking them to behave in a more stiff manner to emphasize the isolation concept of the film. For the first one, the solution is rigorous practice after the actors are completely off script. For the second issue, it can be as simple as not telling your actors when you’re filming. (If that doesn’t solve the problem, then this is usually a sign that your actors aren’t ready to act in front of a camera. To spot this early on, make sure you film your auditions and make each actor act in front of the camera. Then watch the tapes before telling anyone if they’ve gotten a role or not.) For the last issue, their needs to be recognition like death and isolationism are very heavy topics and that a little stiffness goes a long way. As it is right now, this concept is so heavy and overwhelming that it suffocates most of the film.
