Like a lot of Hollywood stars, Shia LaBeouf has two careers: the one in big-budget blockbusters (the Transformers movies, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) and the one in gritty indies (A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, Lawless). And like a lot of his peers, the latter career is the more interesting one. “Interesting” isn’t always the same as “good,” however—a point that’s driven home by his latest, Charlie Countryman. In this European romantic thriller, we see LaBeouf go for an edgier vibe than he exhibits when hanging out with Optimus Prime. He gives his all to material that’s too much of a mess to achieve its bold, sweeping aspirations.
The feature directorial debut of Fredrik Bond, Charlie Countryman stars LaBeouf as the title character, a young man living in Chicago whose mother (Melissa Leo) is about to be taken off life support. Once she dies, though, she appears to the grieving Charlie in a vision, suggesting he go off to Bucharest for a little adventure. Without anything really keeping him in Chicago, he decides to follow his mom’s advice.
But once Charlie gets to the Romanian city, he gets mixed up with Gabi (Evan Rachel Wood), a local musician he first meets because her father died while sitting next to him on the plane to Bucharest. Charlie is immediately smitten with this beautiful woman, but she’s married to an intimidating thug named Nigel (Mads Mikkelsen), who doesn’t take kindly to Gabi’s new friend.
Working from a script by Matt Drake, who co-wrote last year’s teen party romp Project X, Bond seems at times to be making an exaggerated riff on every young American’s fantasy of flying to Europe and getting sucked into a world of dangerous criminals and exotically gorgeous women. Charlie Countryman is most appealing when it leans into that fantasy. Bond, who was born in Sweden but spent many years in London, gives the locales a slick, trashy vividness, goosed along by a score from Christophe Beck and DeadMono, as well as by pulsating songs from the likes of Moby, M83 and the xx. Although Charlie Countryman starts off on a poignant note—Charlie’s loss of his mother and his desire to find himself—the movie quickly shifts to a more euphoric, searching tone, placing Charlie’s coming-of-age against car crashes, sex clubs and chase scenes.