Search - Interstate 84 on DVD

'Hap' happens

Annie Van Auken | Planet Earth | 10/11/2009

(3 out of 5 stars)

"When a newer movie goes straight to a budget-label purveyor like EBE, it's fairly certain to be somewhat ordinary, or at very least misunderstood. It's up to the viewer to decide how to categorize this indie exercise in pseudo-existentialism.


INTERSTATE 84 is primarily the story of an upstate New York small town cop (Littlefield) who's hitting the bottle hard after separating from wife and family. Joe's kids fear him and his missus has given him the GFO card. After one-too-many alcoholic binges, Joe tries to get on track by focusing on a mysterious drowning victim.

The unfortunate fat man's name is Hap (Garland), an eccentric semi-moron who lived in the woods and spent his days loitering by a highway bridge. Three seemingly unrelated items on the body, including a phone number, are all investigators have to work with. This number leads Joe to Vinny (Dillon), a less-than-honest wrestling entrepreneur who importuned Hap into working for him. Joe's partner turns up another of Hap's acquaintances: a young thug named Farley (Cross) who enjoyed harrassing the gentle giant.

A haphazard (no pun intended) script cuts between present and past to eventually shade in Hap's sad existence and murder. Through Hap's death, Joe, Vinny and Farley all find redemption for their own screwed-up lives. It's a slow-moving almost religious allegory that will bore anyone not sympathetic to these four disparate, dysfunctional men.


Parenthetical number preceding title is a 1 to 10 imdb viewer poll rating.

(4.8) Interstate 84 (2000) - Kevin Dillon/John Littlefield/John Doman/Megan Dodds/Harley Cross/Joel Garland"