By John Corrado
Director Cole Webley’s debut feature Omaha is a quiet heartbreaker of a film that delivers a huge emotional impact as it mixes road movie and family drama.
The film opens in the early morning, with a dad (John Magaro) bringing his sleeping son Charlie (Wyatt Solis) out to the car, and waking up his daughter Ella (Molly Belle Wright), telling her to get ready.
All he tells them is that they are going on a trip, and need to leave right away. Dad doesn’t tell them where they are going. Charlie, in his six-year-old way, guesses Disneyland. Ella, at nine-years-old, is suspicious if it’s really a vacation. This begins a drive across the American West, towards Nebraska, wide open landscapes that are beautifully captured by cinematographer Paul Meyers.
Webley’s film is set during 2008 housing crisis and economic downturn. This is never overtly spoken about, but we know it’s 2008 from the McCain sign we see in a window early on (or, more subtly, from the Speed Racer toys that Charlie gets in his Happy Meal). Webley strips the economic crash down to showing it from the perspective of a family impacted by it; the father struggling to financially survive, and the kids who are caught in the middle, not really understanding why money is tight.
Magaro is completely naturalistic as a father just barely holding it together for the sake of his two kids. We see the pain behind his eyes with every item that he has to put back at the store because he can’t afford it. It’s immensely moving work from an actor who has now proven himself in a variety of different roles.
The film also features completely natural and authentic performances from the two child actors. It’s a rare gift to be able to find child actors who are able to subtly carry a film in such a way, but Webley has found that in Solis and Wright. Solis’s wide-eyed curiosity is matched by Wright, who also did wonderful work in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, with her facial expressions and reactions hinting at a deeper realization of what might actually be going on.
There are really only three characters in this film, two of them children, with the story often unfolding from their perspective. It’s stripped down to the basics, but Omaha is infused with the feeling of being drawn from childhood memories. This is a small film in a lot of ways, and it only runs just over eighty minutes long. But the heart-wrenching impact it leaves is gigantic, as it builds to a devastating destination.
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