“But what I really wanna do is direct,” goes the cliché, and yet the skepticism that tends to greet a marquee actor trying their hand at directing isn’t altogether fair—after all, the first marquee director, D.W. Griffith, started out as an actor, and the legacy of actor/directors (from Chaplin to Eastwood to Allen to Affleck) is a daunting one.The latest thespian to step behind the camera is Captain America himself, Chris Evans.
Evans directs and co-stars in Before We Go, a one-night, two-person romance that appears to owe more than a small debt to Before Sunrise. Like the 1995 Linklater fave, Before We Go concerns two strangers (Evans and the invaluable, underrated Alice Eve) who meet in a train station (as opposed to Sunrise’s couple, who met on a train, so see, it’s not the same at all) and spend the night walking around a major metropolis (New York City this time around), sharing their secrets, and falling in love:
Snitty comparisons aside, this one looks promising; the chemistry appears to be present and potent, the writing team includes Ron Bass (Rain Man, My Best Friend’s Wedding, Waiting to Exhale), and Evans has always seemed, in interviews and previous indie films, to be much more than a guy in a superhero suit.
Before We Go is available now on demand; it opens September 4 in limited release.