Before We Go

Before We Go
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Chris Evans
Screenplay by	Ronald Bass Jen Smolka Chris Shafer Paul Vicknair
Story by	Ronald Bass Jen Smolka
Produced by	Chris Evans Mark Kassen McG Mary Viola Karen Baldwin Howard Baldwin William J. Immerman
Starring	Chris Evans Alice Eve
Cinematography	John Guleserian
Edited by	John Axelrad
Music by	Chris Westlake
Production company	Wonderland Sound and Vision
Distributed by	RADiUS
Release dates	September 12, 2014 (2014-09-12) (TIFF) July 21, 2015 (2015-07-21) (United States)
Running time	95 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$3 million[1]
Box office	$483,938[2]

Before We Go is a 2014 American romantic drama film directed by Chris Evans in his directorial debut. It stars Evans (who also co-produced) and Alice Eve as two strangers stuck in Manhattan, New York City for the night.

The film had its world premiere in the Special Presentations section of the 39th Toronto International Film Festival on September 12, 2014.^[3][4] It was released on video on demand on July 21, 2015 and had a limited theatrical release in the United States on September 4, 2015.

Plot[]

While busking in Grand Central Terminal, Nick Vaughan (Chris Evans) sees Brooke Dalton (Alice Eve), drop her phone while running to catch a train. She misses it and passes by and he returns her broken phone.

Nick finds Brooke standing outside and she admits she was just robbed and is trapped in the city. Offering to pay for a cab to Boston for $500, he finds he has only $90 and neither of his cards work. Trying to call a friend to come help, he's out of charge. He offers to pay for a room for Brooke (or walk her to a hotel as she seems to have no sense of direction), but she insists she must travel home.

Nick decides to help Brooke find her missing purse as then she might get her ID and cards back if the thieves just took her cash. They search trash cans in the pub she was in and then bribe the bar owner for information. They track the purse down to a sweatshop with a sideline in stolen purses. As Nick heads inside to retrieve it, Brooke calls her husband on a payphone and he says he is returning home early and they could have breakfast by 8. Evidently, he does not know she is still in New York. After the call, Brooke sends a couple of police officers to investigate the building Nick is in. The sweatshop owners get spooked seeing them on CCTV, and punch Nick, who runs out with the bag.

Nick and Brooke go to the wedding party of a friend of Nick's, hoping to borrow $450 for a hire car for Brooke. Along the way, they open up to each other. Brooke had just sold a painting and was going to surprise her husband by coming home early. Nick has an audition for a band that he has wanted to play with for a long time.

Instead of the wedding, they stumble upon an event where they are mistaken for members of the band and Nick negotiates for a 10% upfront fee of $500 and the organiser goes off to fetch cash. Nick and Brooke perform "My Funny Valentine" whilst waiting but then flee when the real band shows up. Alas, they still have no money.

Nick suddenly thinks of Brooke taking a Chinatown bus which might cost as little as $90 - but they don't even have that, since Nick spent his money bribing the bartender. Brooke borrows a phone in a laundrette, asking a friend to retrieve the letter she left for her husband at home that she now does not want him to read.

Elated her problem is now solved, Brooke offers to go to Nick's friend's wedding and act as his girlfriend in front of his ex, Hannah. There, Nick sees Hannah, but after meeting her new boyfriend, he leaves abruptly. Outside, Nick tells Brooke that this was the first time he had seen Hannah since she broke up with him before he could propose six years ago.

At Brooke's insistence, Nick goes back to speak to Hannah and discovers that she is pregnant and their relationship is truly over. Wandering around the city, they find a psychic who is still open. After he reads her future, he allows Brooke to use his phone and she learns her friend could not get into her home to retrieve the letter.

After leaving the psychic, Brooke tells Nick she discovered her husband was cheating on her. Though he ended the affair, she found out he was going to see the woman again. Devastated, she wrote him a letter ending the marriage and went to New York for work. However, when she called him from the payphone earlier that night, she realized he wasn't meeting the woman as he was coming home early. Thus she regretted her decision to leave him.

At a diner, Nick tells Brooke her husband will likely understand why she wrote the letter. She, preoccupied about the possible end of her marriage, sneaks out the back, trying to hail a cab to the airport to fly to her mother's in Indiana - even though she has neither money nor identification. Nick appears, frustrated she had tried to bail on him, and tells the cab driver Brooke is going to rip him off. He tells Brooke that she’s just running away from her problems. The cab drives off.

The two go back to Nick's friend's hotel room to get out of the cold and unwind from the night's adventures. They then share a kiss, write on the back of paintings in the room (a reference to an earlier encounter with a painting with erotic writing on the back of it), and reflect on their night.

In the morning, they return to Grand Central Station where they are about to part. Nick picks up a receiver again from a phone booth and, like earlier, uses it as a "time machine", pretending to call himself in the past, saying that he will meet a woman and "you will need her more than she needs you". They share one last kiss and finally depart. On her way home, Brooke finds the hotel guest service paper they had filled out together. On the bottom it says, "Turn over". After reading what he wrote on the back, she smiles.

Cast[]

• Chris Evans as Nick Vaughan
• Alice Eve as Brooke Dalton
• Emma Fitzpatrick as Hannah Dempsey^[5]
• Mark Kassen as Danny
• Daniel Spink as Tyler^[5]
• Elijah Moreland as Cole^[5]
• John Cullum as Harry
• Scott Evans as Concierge

Production[]

The film, originally titled 1:30 Train, was first announced in August 2013, when Chris Evans signed on to star, as well as make his directorial debut.^[6] In October Alice Eve signed on to play the female lead.^[7]

Filming began in December 2013 in Manhattan's Lower East Side and lasted for 19 days.^[8][9]

In July 2014, it was announced that the film would premiere at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival, and that the title had been changed to Before We Go.^[10][11]

The film is scored by Chris Westlake.^[12]

Release[]

The film had its world premiere at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival on September 12, 2014.^[13] Prior to the premiere it was announced Radius-TWC had acquired all distribution rights to the film.^[14] The film then went on to screen at the Seattle International Film Festival on May 22, 2015.^[15] The film was released on video on demand on July 21, 2015, and in theaters in a limited release on September 4, 2015.^[16][17]

Home media[]

Before We Go was released on DVD and Blu-ray on November 3, 2015 and was added to Netflix Instant Streaming on March 1, 2016.^[18]

Reception[]

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 27% based on 30 reviews, with an average rating of 2.7/10. The site's critics consensus reads, "Chris Evans' directorial debut is modest to a fault, with a threadbare story and minimal style leaving his and Alice Eve's likable performances adrift in New York City with nowhere to go."^[19] Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 31 out of 100, based on 10 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".^[20]

Soundtrack[]

References[]

External links[]

• Before We Go at IMDb
• Before We Go at Rotten Tomatoes