Born to Lose: Raindance Film Festival Review
As someone who knows Dylan Arnold best as the fresh-faced teenager in the TV series You, it’s a bit of a jump scare seeing him as a heavily tattooed drug dealer in Born to Lose.
In the film, he plays a biker and small-time drug dealer named Andy who offers to take over his father’s big-time enterprise with local gangster Roddy (Shane Callahan) after he passes away. But he doesn’t fully grasp just who he’s got into bed with (metaphorically speaking). He learns soon enough when he loses his drug supply in a bike accident. Roddy and his lackeys give him a month to find the lost pills or pay him back, during which time Roddy occupies his house so he has nowhere to live. Andy turns to his father’s old friend Jed (James Le Gros) for help, and they restore his dad’s bike in order to sell it.
We’ve seen plenty of these gritty dramas where the protagonist desperately has to make money to pay back some dangerous people. But while this feels like familiar territory and I wasn’t sold on the ending, the story is executed well, the characters and their dynamics are interesting, and the stakes feel high. The central relationship between Andy and Jed is its beating heart. Jed becomes his surrogate father – or a better father than Andy’s ever was – and gives him a place to stay, a purpose and strict rules to live by, helping him slowly sort his life out.
Arnold looks unrecognisable from his You days, going from the vulnerable and troubled teen to this sweaty drug addict who effs up at every turn. Arnold does a convincing job and proves his range, and it’ll be intriguing to see what he does next. Fellow You star Ambyr Childers is excellent as Andy’s sister Julie, who is pregnant with Roddy’s child and in a very precarious situation, and Le Gros is solid as the wise voice of reason. Those coming for Sarah Pidgeon may be disappointed by her lack of screen time. She pops up briefly as Andy’s on-off lover Tabitha, and is in it nowhere near enough.
Born to Lose, shot in Kentucky and Nashville, may feel like something you’ve seen before, but the good performances and writing make it still a worthwhile watch.
Premiering at the Raindance Film Festival on Saturday 20th June. No general release date yet