The film Daddio is a movie about a cab driver named Clark (Sean Penn), who picks up a woman (Dakota Johnson) from JFK airport in New York and drives her home to Manhattan.
The drive comes to a stop when the pair come upon an accident that closes the freeway until it’s moved from the one lane available. Penn and Johnson’s characters chat playfully about their lives, with Penn’s Clark guessing details about the woman’s love life and past based on the info she’s giving him.
He’s pointed and honest, sometimes uncomfortably so, but never so off-putting that she’s not ready to volley the conversation back to him.
They slowly peel back the layers of their own lives, revealing past hurts, future hopes, and deep connection in another human being that was unlikely to them both.
The film was written and directed by Christy Hall, in her directorial debut, after having created and written the Netflix series I Am Not Okay With This. She has also adapted the screenplays for the upcoming anticipated movies based on the novels It Ends With Us and The Husband’s Secret, both starring Blake Lively.
Hall clearly has a knack for writing characters that come across as real and believable. Penn’s Clark and Johnson’s “Girlie,” as she’s described in the film’s IMDb, are flawed and complicated, but so honest in their pursuit of kindness toward one another.
Daddio felt like an intimate look inside a real 90-minute car ride, which ended with a true connection between two people who were able to look at one another and see the whole picture, and offer grace to the hurt parts and love to the rest.
Daddio is now playing in theatres.
