Kidnapping a child, especially an autistic one, and going on the run with him is a lousy thing to do, right? Especially if it violates a restraining order, one that triggers an Amber alert. Movies condition us to root for the protagonist, and the new film Ezra presents its audience with a challenge: can you sympathize with a guy who abducts a child and takes off on an interstate run?
Ezra is a rare motion picture that conditions its audience to at least sympathize with a child kidnapper and see things from his point of view. And despite a few virtues in the film, I found that hard to get past.
The set-up of Ezra is that Bobby Cannavale plays Max, a struggling stand-up comedian and father of a 12-year-old autistic son named Ezra (William Fitzgerald). Divorced from Ezra’s mother (Cannavale’s real-life partner Rose Byrne), Max lives in New Jersey with his dad (Robert De Niro). A one-time elite chef, De Niro’s character now works as a doorman. After a series of disagreements about Ezra’s care lead to a fight and a restraining order, Max grabs Ezra and takes off on the road, soon with his ex-wife and dad in tow.
Despite circumstances that sound like the plot of a Criminal Minds episode, the trip gives father and son a chance to bond while visiting a series of offbeat characters (including an almost unrecognizable Rainn Wilson, settling into a new, promising career as a grizzled character actor). The destination is Los Angeles, where Max has a shot at an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live. What’s so mind-boggling about this film is that if not for the kidnapping/restraining order/Amber Alert part, this same story would be touching and affecting.
The film is one of the better depictions of teen autism in recent memory, and Ezra’s story is the most compelling part of the film. Its most emotionally resonant moment is when Ezra physically connects with someone else. Fitzgerald, the actor who plays Ezra, is himself on the spectrum, and he’s fantastic, while Cannavale and De Niro both do substantial work. Ezra was directed by actor Tony Goldwyn—who 25 years ago directed the underseen gem A Walk on the Moon—and written by Tony Spiridakis. It’s based in part on Spiridakis’ own experiences with divorce and parenting an autistic son.
But a lot doesn’t add up. Ezra’s reason for running into the street from his mother’s house, the inciting incident of the entire plot, is a ridiculous misunderstanding. Max isn’t an exceptionally talented comic; like many fictional comedians, he spends most of his time on stage monologuing about whatever’s happening in the movie's plot rather than telling jokes. And shouldn’t he know he’ll be arrested as soon as he shows up at Kimmel’s studio? (The film also conveys the unintended message that the Amber Alert system, as currently constructed, is highly ineffective.)
That’s not enough, though, to make up for the film’s cavalier attitude towards interstate child kidnapping. And that’s even before De Niro gets one of those cathartic speeches that long-distant fathers in movies often give, except this one amounts to, “I apologize for everything I ever did wrong to you—and by the way, you were right to kidnap your son.”
The conclusion is laughable, grafting a happy and mostly consequence-free ending that’s not deserved.