Furlough

Generally an endearing picture about love between mothers and their daughters, set in a quirky, warmhearted story. Good acting performances. Not a terrific movie, but quite nice.

A funny female "buddy" movie about a female cop who has to escort a female convict to her dying mother. Things tend to go get out of control a bit along the way, resulting in some funny and some less funny situations.

Small (10 minutes) , yet funny supporting role by Whoopi Goldberg, who is playing the mom of the police officer. Whoopi keeps calling her daughter while she has to escort the convict, resulting in lots of funny mother-daughter dialogues. Good fun.

Greetings fellow screen peepers! Oscar winner Melissa Leo's film resume is loaded with dramatic roles, but in Furlough we get to see a lighter side of her. In Furlough, she plays Joan Anderson, a prison inmate serving her sentence when she is granted a weekend furlough in order to visit her dying mother. A rookie correction officer played by Tessa Thompson (Annihilation, Creed & Thor: Ragnarok) is assigned to chaperone her but she also has some baggage of her own in the form of a needy mother played by Whoopie Goldberg. The tone of the film is kept light during the first half of the film, but the film takes a more dramatic turn once Leo meets her mother. Leo is more than capable of the tone shift and she shines. Anna Paquin has a solid supporting role towards the end of the film that rounds out the cast. This is a nice feelgood road trip style film

Definitely not great but not the worst. Either way it's watchable despite its cringey moments where the prisoner gets cuffs off and even free from the C.O. for a portion of time, which was ridiculous on many levels. Melissa Leo was pretty decent and so was the young Tessa Thompson; mediocre for what it is.

It's watchable and enjoyable enough if there's nothing on TV and you've trawled through all films to this. I think it could have been very good with roles reversed, and more antagonism by leading players at the start. It would work better with a hard as nails older southern white taking the pretty young black girl to her mother and old surroundings. Wouldn't be political, I hope, but far more interesting.

I really expect more from this movie. It has a number of my favorite actors. It had a good premise. I considered watching it again incase I missed something but decided against it.

The story is ripe with plot holes. Melissa Leo has the strongest performance in my opinion. At least she could say she went to jail for bad decisions and with even being near the end of her sentence she would still make bad choices. I would guess either the director or writer were to blame for failed performances of Tessa Thompson and Whoopi Goldberg.

At least the camerawork was good. Worth seeing once if you have the time and nothing better to watch. Hopefully whoever was at fault will improve their craft in the future.