Daddio

Sean Penn and Dakota Johnson play strangers exchanging intimate stories and confessions during a cab trip in this overly familiar but keenly acted drama.

I don’t know what it is with filmmakers collectively getting into passing fixations with a specific kind of intimate moviemaking involving just one or two characters and a mode of conveyance. In the early 2000s we had a rut of what I called ‘the walking movies,’ like “Gerry” and “Elephant,” where the camera just tracked people ambling and talking.

More recently are the ‘driving movies’ where the action takes place almost entirely inside a moving vehicle. Tom Hardy did it in “Locke” and Russell Crowe barely got out of his truck in “Unhinged.” Perhaps this trend is in turn fed by/feeding an entire field of YouTube videos where people talk at you from inside their car.

(Personally, I prefer my ‘talking and doing something’ movies to be accompanied by food, like “My Dinner with Andre” or “Big Night.”)

Even if “Daddio” treads what is increasingly becoming familiar ground, it’s still an interesting and keenly acted film.

The plot is: there is no plot. Dakota Fanning plays a never-named young professional woman (dubbed “Girlie” in the credits) getting a cab ride home one night. She’s going from JFK airport to 45th and 9th, about a 45-minute drive, but they get stuck in traffic so the ride takes up the entirety of the movie.

Her cabbie is Clark, played by Sean Penn, a grizzled 20+ year veteran of the trade. He likes the way she doesn’t stay on her phone the whole time like his other fares, and actually looks him directly in the eyes through the rearview mirror. He likes to chat, and she seems receptive, and then Clark begins pushing things into more and more intimate areas.

That’s it. That’s the whole movie.

Written and directed by Christy Hall in her directorial debut, “Daddio” is filled with sexual tension, but we know these two are not going to end up as a couple. She’s about 30 and stunning, he must be close to twice that and is gnarled up like an old forest oak. They talk about a lot of things during their 1½-hour drive, but their relationships are the primary topic. As strangers who’ll never meet again, they feel free to unburden themselves in ways they wouldn’t with someone closer to them.

Clark starts off on easy topics to soften her up. He yaps about how he’s going to replaced soon by apps directing driverless cars. He jabbers about the value of salt — something people once literally fought and died over, and is now stuff in little packets you throw away. She mentions she’s a computer programmer, and he says you mean like 1s and 0s? And she says more like things that are true and false.

That sets the tone for the evening. Truths will be revealed, and self-deception will be pierced. They also have a (mostly) friendly, running tally of who tells the best anecdotes or puts one over on the other.

I don’t want to tell you too much of the specifics they talk about, since the big appeal of the movie is watching these two characters slowly open up to each other and share. In very broad terms, Clark gets her to talk about the guy she’s currently seeing — whom she does surreptitiously text with, and let’s just say he’s the frisky sort.

He in turn tells her what he sees as the truth about how men view women. Really, it’s about men competing with each other to see who can amass the nicest toys, because that’s what attracts women. Clark has been married himself, confesses that he played around on his wife, didn’t regret it at the time but now clearly does. He’s trying to needle Girlie while also imparting what he thinks is an important truth.

“Most guys, deep down, looking like a family man is more important than being one,” he says.

She is returning from a two-week trip out West to see an important person from her past she really doesn’t like, but felt a need to close the book on. We sense she’s currently at the end of a long journey and the start of a new one, and I don’t mean the plane and cab rides.

These are two very nice, veiled performances by Johnson and Penn. Neither character wants to lay their cards right on the table to start, so the long game must be played — and both actors clearly enjoy the feints and hints, the subtle power play going on.

As a filmmaker, Hall has a good sense of pacing, stirring the dialogue up to a high simmer and then taking off the heat to let things cool… until the next time comes to stir things up. We’re never not engaged.

Do I feel like I’ve seen this movie too many times already? I do. But “Daddio” is still a quietly compelling ride.