LaRoy, Texas movie review & film summary (2024) | Roger Ebert

“LaRoy, Texas” immediately tests your expectations. Driving down a dark dirt country road, Harry (Dylan Baker), whose car headlights are the only beacons of life amid the barren clime, passes a broken-down truck parked off-road. A few yards later, Harry spots the possible driver of the abandoned vehicle, picking up the stranded soul, a bearded, foreboding hitchhiker who looks like the beginning of a true-crime mystery. Baker is a curious choice for this role, an actor equally known for portraying hapless idiots and soulless pencil pushers. Here, he engages in cheery conversation; the mysterious hitchhiker half-heartedly jokes about the dangers of picking up strangers. Harry seems like an innocent, small-town fellow, deflecting the stranger’s hypotheticals with an unassuming ease until turning the tables. Maybe, Harry asks, he purposefully damaged the hitchhiker’s vehicle at a previous rest stop so he could pick him up.It’s a smart gambit of an opening scene by writer/director Shane Atk...