
Set along the legendary road that leads from Thunder Bay in northern Ontario to New Orleans (passing through St. Louis, Memphis and many points in between), Highway 61 is a finely tuned, high-octane road movie. Don McKellar stars as a barber and frustrated trumpet player who has been planning to flee his small town for years and journey to New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz. When a kid happens to die in his backyard, he gets mixed up with a hard-ass roadie played by Valerie Buhagiar, and before he knows it, he’s speeding down the blacktop with a pine coffin strapped to the roof of his Galaxie 500. To make matters more interesting, they meet somebody named Mr. Skin, an ominous and unnaturally pale figure with a thing for fresh souls.