Twenty years after making the great Paris, Texas, director Wim Wenders and writer Sam Shepard reunite for Don't Come Knocking, another tale of personal discovery and familial redemption informed by Wenders' enduring fascination with the West. The two films even share the same existential opening: An aging man walks alone in an arid expanse toward an unknown destination, ultimately embarking on a quest to find himself and his family. And yet something's missing this time around, mainly because Wenders and Shepard seem oddly detached from the material, both going through the expected motions without ever finding the proper tone. It doesn't help that the film premièred at Cannes alongside Jim Jarmusch's superior Broken Flowers, which tells a similar story about a lonely lothario's search for his son, but achieves just the right balance between understated comedy and the pervasive feeling of regret. By that standard, Don't Come Knocking is all over the place.
