Modern production values and storytelling sensibilities, 50s flavors: 'Moonshine Highway' may have been made in the 90s, but thirty years later it looks just about as sharp as if it were put out yesterday. There's more violence, sensuality, and profanity than we might have seen in contemporary fare, some of Steve Dorff's score gives us present-day ambience, and the overall tone is more dour. Make no mistake, though, that in many others ways this looks and sounds like something of another few decades' past. In the 50s and 60s there were plenty of titles that explored fast cars, risky business, and dangerous living, and for all the ways in which this can be dated as a Showtime TV movie, filmmaker Andy Armstrong was clearly fixing to revisit classics like 'Thunder Road' and 'Thunder Alley.' We get tastes of music we would have heard in the such latter fare, aesthetics plucked right from a trip through time, and classic plot elements of honest people butting heads with The Law and each other while living the way they always have. All told it's nothing so special as to particularly demand viewership, but if you do have a chance to watch, it's quite worthwhile on its own merits.
The one indisputable issue I think this picture faces is that it's too soft and restrained for its own good. Even with autos speeding, guns firing, fists flying, and the occasional explosion, and even down to the late culmination of the course of events in the third act, the proceedings generally advance with about all the vigor of a couple of good ol' boys downing some home-brewed liquor on the porch of a remote cabin in the woods, a stone's throw from a spring-fed creek. Where 'Moonshine Highway' rips, it absolutely rips, and it also gets decidedly dark in some ways - but mostly that vitality is restricted not just to the last third, but to the last ten minutes or so. Be that as it may, even if the sum total leaves a bit to be desired, when all is said and done the picture is just swell. The stunts and effects we get throughout are terrific, above all at the climax, and the cast is terrific. Hot off the success of 'Twin Peaks' a few years earlier it's a pleasure to see Kyle MacLachlan do something a bit different; Maria del Mar is all so charming as beleaguered Ethyl; Gary Farmer is a treasure as friendly Hooch; and so on, and so on. The production design, art direction, and on-site filming locations are a minor delight, and in all other ways the feature is superbly well made: costume design, hair, makeup, sound, cinematography, and so on.
Armstrong is breaking no ground with his screenplay or his direction, but nor is he trying to. 'Moonshine Highway' is no revelation, but is perfectly enjoyable exactly as it is. While it may not make a major impression, there's no rule that says every viewing experience needs to. This is likely best suggested for those who are fans of MacLachlan or someone else involved, yet one way or another, if you do have the opportunity to watch, I don't think there's any going wrong here. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.
