'Tow' Review
- Peter Gray
- 1 day ago
- 2 min read
Release Date: 03/20/26 [Cinemas]
Genre: Drama.
MPAA: Rated R.
Distributor: Roadside Attractions.
The Verdict: A Must-See
There’s a quiet fury running through Tow, and it’s what makes the film linger long after it ends.
The setup almost feels familiar: a woman down on her luck, another humiliating job interview, another closed door. Amanda, played by Rose Byrne, is living out of her ageing Toyota Camry, shielding her young daughter (Elsie Fisher) from the truth with carefully framed video calls from cafés and park benches. When she finally lands a modest job at a dog grooming salon - only for her car to be stolen, towed, and held ransom behind an impossible fine - the film pivots into something more pointed. Not a courtroom thriller. Not a grandstanding crusade. Just one woman trying to claw back a sense of dignity from a system that doesn’t see her.
What’s striking is how restrained the storytelling is. The script and Stephanie Laing’s direction sidestep the easy beats you expect from “inspired by a true story” dramas. There’s no swelling sentimentality, no cartoonish villains. Even the towing company’s lawyer (played with icy polish by Corbin Bernsen) feels less like a mustache-twirler and more like a cog in a machine that simply doesn’t care. The injustice is bureaucratic, procedural - and that’s what makes it sting.
Byrne is extraordinary in the smallest ways. A pink bow perched in her hair. A flicker of humiliation she quickly swallows. The way her smile falters half a second too late. The film trusts these micro-moments, allowing Amanda’s history - including a brief, quietly devastating revelation in an AA meeting - to sit in implication rather than melodrama. It understands that real desperation rarely announces itself loudly.
Running throughout is the phrase “people like you,” tossed at Amanda in tones ranging from sympathetic to dismissive; many of these stemming from the embarrassment of riches that is the support cast of Simon Rex, Octavia Spencer, Ariana DeBose, Dominic Sessa, and Demi Lovato. It becomes the film’s thesis in miniature. Even kindness can flatten a person into a category. Even good intentions can echo the same systemic blindness.
Tow doesn’t rage at the world in explosive fashion. It does something more unsettling: it shows how easily a life can unravel when reduced to paperwork, policies, and assumptions. By the time the real Amanda appears on screen, the story has earned its emotional weight - not through spectacle, but through a deeply human refusal to be generalized.
It’s not a loud film. It doesn’t need to be.
