April 4, 2026
by Carla Hay
Directed by Stephanie Laing
Culture Representation: Taking place in Seattle (with a a few scenes taking in place in Utah), the comedy/drama film “Tow” (based on real events) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some African Americans and Latin people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A down-on-her-luck woman is living out of her car, which is stolen and towed, and she fights a year-long battle to get back her car.
Culture Audience: “Tow” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and movies about vagrants who experience obstacles in a system that treats them as inferior to people with permanent home addresses.
“Tow” sometimes gets caught up in a sitcom tone that lowers the quality of this comedy/drama that’s based on a true story. However, Rose Byrne shines in the role of a woman fighting to get back her towed car that was her residence. The movie capably shows how being pulled out of a vagrancy rut is not as simple as finding someone a job or temporary shelter.
Directed by Stephanie Laing, “Tow” was written by Jonathan Keasey and Brant Boivin. Byrne is one of the producers of the movie, which had its world premiere at the 2025 Tribeca Festival. “Tow” takes place primarily in Seattle in 2017 and 2018, with some scenes taking place in Utah. The movie was actually filmed in New Jersey. “Tow” is inspired by real events that happened to Seattle resident Amanda Ogle during this time period.
“Tow,” which is told in chronological order, begins in 2017, by showing Amanda Ogle (played by Byrne) in a job interview. Amanda is a “vehicular resident”—someone whose home is a vehicle—but she’s embarrassed to tell people that this is her living situation. Amanda’s car is a 1991 blue Toyota Camry that has all of her possessions.
Amanda has a veterinary technician license and is applying for a job at a veterinary clinic. However, the interviewer (who is not seen on camera) questions if Amanda is qualified for the job because Amanda doesn’t have a college degree. Amanda, who is often blunt and rude when she gets defensive, replies: “You need a college degree to stick a thermometer up a dog’s ass?” The interviewer says the job is more about people skills. And it’s at this point you know Amanda isn’t going to be hired for this job.
Even though Amanda’s hair and clothes are clean, there are indications she’s having a tough time in life because her upper teeth are caked in plaque. Amanda (who likes to wear a lot of pink) has fallen on hard times and is recovering from alcoholism. She is later shown in a support group meeting for addiction recovery, but she refuses to share her story. Her aloofness in these meetings is a pattern for her, but you just know at some point she’ll eventually open up and tell her story.
Amanda is a single mother to a child named Avery (played by Elsie Fisher), who is about 16 or 17. Avery is currently living in Utah with an unnamed family that is not related to Avery and Amanda. It’s implied that Avery is in a foster care system.
Although the movie never says the word “non-binary” out loud, Avery’s pronouns are “they/them.” Amanda is completely accepting of Avery and is supportive of Avery’s passion for designing costumes for role-playing games. Fisher does quite well in the role as Avery and actually wears clothes designed by the real-life Avery Ogle for this movie.
It’s later mentioned in the movie that Amanda lost custody of Avery because of Amanda’s alcohol addiction, Amanda’s unstable living situation and because Amanda attempted suicide three years ago. Amanda and Avery keep in touch by phone. However, there’s some tension in the relationship because Avery has often been let down by Amanda’s broken promises to Avery. Amanda has promised Avery that Amanda will visit Avery in Utah for the upcoming Christmas holiday.
Things seem to be looking up for Amanda when she gets a job at another veterinary clinic by charming the interviewer with some helpful animal care advice. The job requires Amanda to use her car for transportation of animals. Amanda is elated to get the job, but her happiness turns to dismay when she leaves the building and sees that her car has been stolen.
Amanda calls police to report that her car has been stolen. She later finds out that the unknown car thief parked the car in a zone where the car got towed. Amanda goes to Kaplan’s Towing Service, the place that has her car. The front-desk employee who processes the towing documents and payments is a guy named Cliff (played by Simon Rex), who informs her that the cost to get her vehicle returned to her is $270.23 plus $50 a day for every day that the car is at this towing place.
Amanda’s doesn’t have the money and doesn’t think it’s fair that she has to pay the towing fees because the car was stolen and parked in a towing zone. Cliff refuses Amanda’s pleas to let her have the car back without paying the fees because he says he could get fired if he breaks the rules for her. When Cliff figures out that Amanda was living out of the car, he shows some mercy and lets her take out some items she needs from the car.
The next part of the movie doesn’t look very believable because of some plot contrivances. Instead of going to her new job, where she could earn the money to pay the towing fee, Amanda goes to an unnamed government clerk’s office to find out how she can sue Kaplan’s Towing Service to get her car back without paying the towing fees. Amanda doesn’t even bother calling the place that hired her to explain her situation, just in case they could let her work for a few days without a car.
Amanda thinks that Kaplan’s Towing Service is “extorting” her and “scamming” her, when actually Amanda has no way of proving that a random thief parked the car in a towing zone. It’s not the towing company’s responsibility to find out who parked the car in a place where the car could get towed. And that’s why there are parts of this “underdog” story that aren’t convincing in trying to portray Amanda as a victim who was defrauded by a towing company.
While she’s at the clerk’s office, Amanda is approached by a 24-year-old attorney named Kevin Eggers (played by Dominic Sessa), who works for a non-profit group called Northwest Consumer Law Center. Kevin explains that he overheard Amanda talking about her towed vehicle problem, and he offers to help her by taking on her case pro bono (for free). “My mission is to help people like you fight corporate bullies,” Kevin says to Amanda, who declines his offer because she thinks he’s condescending and because she thinks she can fight her legal battles on her own. However, Amanda keeps the business card that Kevin gave to her.
With nowhere else to live, Amanda is referred to a women’s shelter located inside a church. The shelter’s manager is Barbara (played by Octavia Spencer), who is strict and religious. Barbara allows a desperate Amanda to stay there, even though the shelter is already at capacity. Barbara explains to Amanda that the rules for shelter residents include adhering to the shelter’s curfews, abstaining from alcohol and illegal drugs, attending group meetings, and looking for employment. Amanda says she’ll follow the rules and mentions she’s been sober for the past seven months.
Throughout the movie, captions appear on screen to show how many days Amanda has been without her car. The legal dispute that she thought would be cleared up in a few months ends up stretching into a little more than a year. She experiences many disappointments and setbacks along the way, mainly because Kaplan’s Towing and Service’s wealthy and arrogant owner Martin LaRosa (played by Corbin Bernsen) spitefully drags out the case and plays dirty tricks during the legal battle. It should come as no surprise that Amanda ends up hiring attorney Kevin when she feels that she’s run out of options.
At the church shelter, Amanda has some difficulty adjusting because she doesn’t want to get close to anyone. Amanda is not aggressively hostile to the other residents, but she has an attitude that she doesn’t really belong there because she thinks she can do much better in her life. Amanda’s sobriety is tested because of all the stress she experiences from the lawsuit and from her tenuous relationship with Avery. Amanda also gets into some conflicts with no-nonsense Deborah, who opens up to Amanda about her own troubled past.
Some of the shelter residents whom Amanda encounters include pregnant Nova (played by Demi Lovato), who says she has no friends or family members who can help her; feisty Denise (played by Ariana DeBose), a divorced mother who lost custody of her two kids because of Denise’s various addictions; friendly Lorraine (played by Bree Elrod), who has a mental illness that causes her to hallucinate; and combative Jocelyn (played by Lea DeLaria), who gets into a physical fight with Amanda when Jocelyn steals Amanda’s combat boots, which are the only shoes that Amanda owns.
Amanda’s experiences at the shelter take up a great deal of screen time in the movie, even though she doesn’t live there for most of the story. And although these scenes are well-acted, the shelter scenes are uneven, as if the movie isn’t sure how much it wants to spend developing characters who are ultimately transient in Amanda’s life. This isn’t the type of movie where Amanda makes lifelong friends with any of the shelter residents. There are also some repetitive scenes where Amanda wakes up in the shelter as if she’s just had a nightmare.
Lovato (who is better known as a singer than as an actress) seems to be in the movie so she can have a big singing scene, which happens when she belts out “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” during a Christmas party scene at the shelter. Lovato’s Nova character is young enough to be Amanda’s daughter, so there are a few scenes where Amanda feels somewhat maternal toward Nova. DeBose looks a little too polished for the “rough around the edges” character she’s supposed to portray, but she gives a fairly convincing performance as someone who tries to make a friendship connection with Amanda.
In the role of Barbara, Spencer does the best that she can with the type of “tough love” character that is often a cliché in these types of movies. Sessa’s Kevin is an over-eager and nerdy lawyer character that also comes dangerously close to being a stereotype, although Sessa brings a lot of talented nuance to the role. The unlikely bond that develops between Kevin and Amanda is one of the best things about the movie because this working friendship looks organic, even if hardly anything is told in the movie about Kevin’s personal life.
“Tow” shows some periods of time when Amanda is living on the streets without her car. “Tow” somewhat glosses over the dangers of being in this situation, especially with Amanda being an unarmed woman who’s living on her own. The worst encounter she experiences with someone else on the streets is being approached by a hustler type named Ace the Car Rancher (played by Lío Mehiel), who tries to entice Amanda into working for Ace as a sex worker. Amanda declines the offer and walks away from Ace, who doesn’t harm her.
Amanda is unemployed for almost the entire movie, which doesn’t adequately explain how she gets enough money to survive. She’s not eligible for Social Security payments. And without a permanent address, Amanda doesn’t get welfare money either. At one point, Amanda is seen selling a street newspaper but not getting any buyers. It’s a job that Barbara originally suggested that Amanda take. But Amanda wasn’t interested at the time because she would have to buy the newspapers at 60 cents each and selling them for $2 each, leaving her with only a profit of $1.40 per newspaper.
The music score and some of the dialogue in “Tow” sometimes try too hard to be cute and whimsical. “Tow” did not have to be a dark and depressing movie, but the subject matter isn’t cute or whimsical, which is why some of the movie’s tone is mismatched. Through it all and even with these flaws, Byrne’s captivating performance is the movie’s best highlight. Amanda has a realistic personality, even if some of the scenarios around her don’t always look like they happened that way in real life. It’s easy to like “Tow” and forgive the movie’s imperfections when the movie’s imperfect protagonist is easy to root for and has emotional authenticity.
Roadside Attractions and Vertical released “Tow” in select U.S. cinemas on March 20, 2026.
