“Waddya mean, paintball?!”
Tollbooth (2021; US title: The Toll) is a tidy example of modern film noir. Multiple gangs wish control of a tollbooth in the Welsh hinterlands. In it lives the leader, if he does indeed lead anyone, of one of the gangs, a bookish man who still manages to indulge in a certain amount of violence.
Into this comes a policewoman who is damaged by the mysterious death of her brother a year earlier; upholding the public weal somehow seems hollow in his absence. The antics of triplets, dancing in the shadow of Death, clownish gangs looking to acquire the booth, even the arrival of a gang boss from the old days, boastful and annoying, fails to improve her mood.
And then everyone meets for the final standoff. Welsh inscrutability vs the modern age.
Like the Welsh personality, this story doesn’t invite you in; you may have to break a window and stick your head in. But if you like a certain melancholic uncertainty in your life, Tollbooth will deliver for you.
