Before We Go

Chris Evans directs for the first time, and also produced and stars. Four writers are credited: Ronald Bass, Jen Smolka, Chris Shafer and Paul Vicknair. Bass won an Oscar for the Rain Man screenplay; here he signs a night walk carried by two people. The project was announced in August 2013 as 1:30 Train. Shooting began in December 2013 on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and ran 19 days, on a budget of 3 million dollars. The scale shows: two people, one night, a handful of stops. The script does not lean on talk alone. A stolen purse, a raid on a sweatshop, a friend’s wedding and a psychic still open at night keep producing errands to get the pair talking. Mistaken for the band at an event, Alice Eve sings My Funny Valentine. The concierge is the director’s younger brother, Scott Evans. It screened in Toronto on 12 September 2014, yet reached viewers first on digital rental on 21 July 2015 and only then in a limited run of prints from 4 September 2015. It took 483,938 dollars in all. A good fit if you want Chris Evans’s first go at directing watched with the plainness of one night’s walk shot in 19 days. Not for anyone who wants the two kept at the table, with no errand slipped in.