TOW (Tribeca 2025) – Review by Valerie Kalfrin
A 1991 Toyota Camry is easy to dismiss, much like its owner in Tow, a star-studded David and Goliath story about homelessness that unfortunately spins its wheels in spots.
Based on a true story, the film sees Amanda (Rose Byrne, Physical) living out of the car in Seattle while she hunts for a job as a veterinary technician. During one of her job interviews, someone steals the Toyota, which winds up on a private towing lot.
Amanda naturally can’t pay the fee to recover it, a sum that starts at about $200 and balloons by the day. Instead of despairing, though, she reads through city laws and files a pro bono lawsuit to get it back.
Premiering at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival, Tow has shades of 2000’s Erin Brockovich, with its scrappy and underestimated working-class protagonist. Byrne plays her Amanda with dignity and pride but also stubbornness, a woman with a pink bandana similar to Rosie the Riveter and a drinking problem. She insists the Camry is only temporary and hides her situation from her teenage daughter, who lives in Utah with her ex-husband. Anyone who calls her euphemisms like “vehicle resident” gets the stink-eye, the brush-off, or a bitter laugh.
The film argues for human decency without being preachy when Amanda gets to know the towing lot worker Cliff (Simon Rex, It’s Florida, Man) on a first-name basis or says of the car, “It’s got four wheels, and it’s mine.” She also encounters an eager young lawyer (Dominic Sessa, The Holdovers) who recognizes the larger scam at play when the towing company attorney (Corbin Bernsen, Your Friends & Neighbors) dodges court dates and filings while the balance keeps growing.
None of this is enough to maintain sufficient tension over an hour and 45 minutes, though. The film at times takes unnecessary detours, showing Amanda nagging Cliff day-to-day or her stints through a church-run shelter. She meets a young pregnant woman with a lovely singing voice (singer Demi Lovato), a recovering drug addict (Oscar-winner Ariana DeBose, Love Hurts), and the shelter manager (Oscar-winner Octavia Spencer, Truth Be Told) with her own story of hitting rock bottom—all fine performers but characters in thumbnail sketches.
Directed by Stephanie Laing (The Better Sister) with a script by Jonathan Keasey (Parallel) and Brant Boivin, Tow is well-intentioned, if not fully rousing. Byrne and the others sell it when they need to, conveying by the end the value of a place to call one’s own.
