After the death of their father, widely celebrated theoretical physicist Driscoll Tarnow, the three Tarnow siblings (Leslie, Joey & Vyra) find themselves at a crossroads, splintering off into radically different directions in order to deal with the loss. Leslie recruits an ASU engineer to assist her in the construction of a fertilizer bomb, Joey falls in love while descending deeper into his addiction to Adderall, and Vyra becomes friends with a YouTube star with a very rare disease while working on a series of autobiographical paintings. DUKELAND is a fragmented family saga about grief, transformation, and the internet.
After the untimely death of his brother by way of an ambush in Kandahar, Afghanistan, the protagonist, ‘81’(Alan Ritchson) unsuccessfully makes several attempts to become an Army Ranger. On his last mission to complete the Ranger selection process he and his squad encounter an otherworldly ‘soldier’.
For a young girl who wishes to keep her current traditions, this holiday will end up with a surprise twist.
What are we willing to walk through to see our dreams come to pass? Our minds might be so wholly alive with the passions we carry and the plans we make to see these things become all we wish them to be, yet life doesn’t always want to come alongside. Instead, obstacles arise, both physical and mental, which attempt to dissuade us or even prevent us from moving forward, stalling or stagnating the momentum to achieve what we desire. The age-old question remains….can we overcome? Or will we BE overcome?
Despite the film’s efforts to reframe its heroine with modern complexity, a certain emotional distance lingers.
This is not a film, it’s a drop tower. A drop tower that you don’t get off of for the vast majority of its 106-minute runtime.
