In Christy Hall’s ‘Daddio,’ Dakota Johnson and Sean Penn navigate a night of truth and tension in a NYC taxi
By James Verniere/Boston Movie News
No one actually says the word in the title of “Daddio” a two-hander featuring Dakota Johnson and Sean Penn as, respectively, a beautiful passenger going to midtown Manhattan from an airport and a grizzled New York City taxi driver. Written and directed by first-time feature filmmaker Christy Hall, “Daddio” was originally a Daisy Ridley project. Johnson, also credited as one of the film’s producers, stepped in. Clearing the hot stink of “Madame Web,” Johnson holds her own with Oscar-winning veteran Penn, whose signature mega-tan makes him look like a wood-stained Travis Bickle.
Identified only as “Girlie” in the credits, a nickname her driver uses, Johnson steps off the sidewalk in an opening scene trailing an expensive carry-on and gets into the cab. The actor, who wears a tie-dyed, long-sleeved top with a cowl neckline, trades her long, dark tresses for a platinum bob. At first, she and the driver do not speak. We happily gaze at Anastasia Steele, even if those “50 Shades of Grey” films are a joke. But the point in today’s Hollywood is to get famous first and then have a career. Johnson is, of course, the daughter of Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith—marvel at those genes.
Penn, whose cabby claims, not very believably, that his name is Clark, is also Hollywood royalty. He is the son of the top-flight television director Leo Penn (“Colombo,” etc.) and went to Beverly Hills (not Ridgemont) High. Clark declares that “Girlie” is his “last fare of the night,” so we know something meaningful and maybe even existential is about to happen. The young woman, whose purse contains a phone and a vape, gets a text reading, “Can I see you?” The writer turns out to be the older, married man she is having a torrid affair with, about which she has misgivings. Penn’s goatee does not have a single gray hair despite the actor’s 63 years. His head, however, is streaked with silver. Clark’s speech is salty enough to spike your blood pressure. Every other word is an F-bomb. His delivery is aggressive. His talk has the violent philosophical tinge of someone about to commit murder. Clark rightly believes the taxi cab is going the way of Blockbuster and is about to be replaced by self-driving cars. Before you can say, “Can I get that Travis Bickle guy instead as my driver?” Clark embarks upon a way too personal and invasive interrogation of his passenger and her life.
He begins with a totally amateur—Or is it?—analysis of her, starting with her Oklahoma childhood, where she loses her mother, leaves her father as a girl, and is raised by her older, half-Native-American sister Eagle (names are not Hall’s strong suit). The garrulous passenger is a highly-paid “coder,” living in gentrified Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood, a former Irish slum, and writer-director Hall makes much frankly tiresome, metaphorical use of “ones” and “zeroes” in her dialogue. The woman’s lover continues to send increasingly demanding, borderline abusive texts, including a pornographic image meant to impress his need upon her. Apparently, this is the world we live in.
“Daddio” isn’t great. I would have cut Clark’s line, “Do you like getting tied up?” But these actors are so charismatic, and it’s so much fun watching Madame Web banter with the esteemed scrapper Penn (“Milk,” “Mystic River”) that you put up with it. If you’re in the mood for this sort of thing, check out the better-written, more sentimental 2022 French film “Driving Madeleine” with Line Renaud and Dany Boon. Thank heavens Penn was not allowed to smoke. Johnson would have gotten nicotine poisoning. That’s real trash piled up on the streets of New York City. In a revealing moment, Clark gets his passenger to admit that she sometimes calls her older lover “Daddy,” if not Daddio.
‘Daddio’
Rating: R for language throughout, sexual material and brief graphic nudity
Cast: Dakota Johnson, Sean Penn
Writer-Directer: Christy Hall
Running time: 1 hour, 41 minutes
Where to Watch: AMC Boston Common, Liberty Tree Mall, and other suburban theaters
Grade: B
Boston Movie News 
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