‘Daddio’ Review: Sean Penn And Dakota Johnson Drive Breakthrough First Film From Christy Hall – Telluride Film Festival
deadline.comDaddio is a knockout, the sort of breakthrough by a virtual unknown that many might dream about but only rarely takes place.
Entirely set in a taxi stuck for a long time at night on a jammed highway heading from New York City’s JFK airport to Manhattan, debuting writer-director Christy Hall has created a marvelous two-hander between a veteran New York cabbie who’s seen it all and a young woman trying to figure things out.
Sean Penn is at his absolute best here in a tremendously engaging performance as a salty working-class guy with an endless supply of opinions and ways of drawing out his passengers, while Dakota Johnson more than holds her own as a game passenger increasingly willing to share her problems with the amateur shrink behind the wheel.
The film should play very well to a wide range of audiences. After flying rather under the radar over the past few years, Penn reasserts his longtime position as one of the top American actors, not by digging deep, and sometimes too deep, into histrionics and rage, but with humor and a way of looking at life from all sorts of angels.
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