In 1964, professional ice skater and animal trainer Dave Pitts encountered a young hitchhiker who was on a killing spree. The story was fictionalized in Conrad Hilberry's book "Luke Karamazov," which is the source of "He Went That Way," the feature directing debut of cinematographer Jeff Darling. Jacob Elordi plays Bobby, the nasty, brash killer, while Zachary Quinto plays Jim, the diffident trainer. Jim has troubles, including a wobbly marriage, debt, and bad work prospects for the chimp. Bobby is apt to add to his woes, but the two bond anyway. Elordi's performance in "He Went That Way" lacks the discipline he applied to his work in "Priscilla" and "Saltburn." The film is laboriously quirky, with an indifferent script that feeds Elordi almost as much profanity as Al Pacino uses in "Scarface." The best entertainment is archival footage of the actual Spanky ice-skating, but the rest of the movie is not worth watching. "He Went That Way" is a mid-century indie film that tells the true story of Dave Pitts, an ice-skating chimpanzee who was a star in the Ice Capades. The film stars Australian cinematographer Jeffrey Darling and adapts the book "Luke Karamazov" by Conrad Hillberry. However, the film fails to find a steady tone, veers off into bizarre subplots, and features two underwhelming performances from the talented lead duo. Set in 1964, the story begins with an in medias res development involving a dead body and flashes back a few weeks earlier. Zachary Quinto's Jim Goodwin is driving his rickety old van through Death Valley when he picks up Jacob Elordi's Bobby, a lanky and movie star-handsome stranger. Bobby claims to be an Air Force veteran who has been roaming America and is now trying to reunite with his girlfriend in Milwaukee. Jim is driving to Chicago, and the movie is heavy with symbolism about the uncertainty of America in the aftermath of the JFK assassination, the Vietnam War, and social protests. The chimp, played by an actor in motion capture (with some puppetry as well), never really seems like an actual chimp. There's something sad about the idea of a chimp taken from West Africa, forced to train for hundreds of hours, and turned into a costumed performer who is now spending most of its life in a small cage in the back of a van. Zachary Quinto delivers icy and distant work as Jim, while Jacob Elordi goes way over the top, as if he had watched "Rebel Without a Cause" a dozen times and decided to turn up the James Dean impersonation to an 11. "He Went That Way" ends as it began with a series of self-conscious and eccentric developments that feel inauthentic and forced.
