They don’t come much darker than this one.
At first blush, this modern crime noir from director Potsy Ponciroli and writer Mike Vukadinovich looks like it’ll occupy the darkly humorous neighborhood populated by sardonic classics such as Fargo and In Bruges. The occasional dollops of humor are twisted: driven both by a bevy of burlesque characters and a plot that is far more comically convoluted than it initially appears.
 |
| The story cooked up by Will (Hamish Patel, left) and Terry (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), in an effort to explain a woman's grisly death, doesn't withstand the smell test ... but they nonetheless stick to it. |
People who make films of this nature understand that some boundaries shouldn’t be crossed; call them Thou Shalt Nots. Savvy writers and directors recognize that, no matter how twisted or deplorably their characters behave, it’s wise to avoid Thou Shalt Nots, lest viewers be outraged and alienated past the point of forgiveness.
Occasionally, though, really savvy directors and/or writers sometimes take that risk, assuming that their filmmaking chops are solid enough to hold the audience. John Carpenter (in)famously violated a Thou Shalt Not at the beginning of 1976’s Assault on Precinct 13, gambling that he’d maintain a level of suspense that would make the move worthwhile. He won that gamble.
And goodness; the entire John Wick film series owes its longevity to a Thou Shalt Not broken in the initial 2014 entry.
I’m less persuaded that Ponciroli and Vukadinovich are similarly successful here, although the aforementioned wallop definitely plunges their film into much deeper waters.
The time is the present, in the sleepy Northeastern coastal island community of Providence (not to be confused with Rhode Island’s capital city). Rookie policeman Will (Himesh Patel) and his very pregnant wife Paige (Lily James) moved into town just three days earlier; they’re still waist-high in unpacked boxes.
Will dutifully reports for work on this, his first day; he’s given a brief rundown by Captain Murphy (Uzo Aduba). We’ve already seen her earlier this same morning, at home, still mourning the loss of a young child. Murphy assigns Will to a week of training with veteran cop Terry (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), after which the newcomer will get his own vehicle and beat.
Will is an inherently honest family guy who believes in the social stabilization of moral law enforcement. Terry is an opportunistic, foul-mouthed horse’s ass who views police work as an easy path to free coffee and donuts, while rousting and threatening folks for the sheer joy of it. They have nothing in common.
Terry acts according to three personal rules, the first of which is, Try Not To Kill Anybody. “It gets messy,” he tells a bewildered Will.
Because, really, who would need killing in a place like Providence?
Alas, Will isn’t on the job for even half a day, when — while responding to a call on his own, because Terry has stopped for late-morning delight with his lady friend — a chaotic misunderstanding ends with a woman dead in her own kitchen. It’s a total accident, but a panicked Will hasn’t the faintest idea what to do next.
When Terry arrives, moments later, his initial effort to fabricate some sort of home-invasion crime scene takes a left turn when they overturn a basket...
...and $1 million in cash spills onto the floor.
Well.
Terry finishes the home-invasion scenario, and persuades a flustered and overwhelmed Will that they should take the loot for themselves. They subsequently dump it into Terry’s waterfront storage locker — we briefly wonder what else he previously may have concealed there — and, to his credit, he shares the lock’s combination with Will.
It turns out the dead woman is the wife of local businessman Wallace Chetlo (Tim Blake Nelson), owner and public face of the Chetlo Shrimp Co., infamous for the tacky TV commercials in which he appears. This turns his wife’s death into a high-profile investigation.
Shortly thereafter, Ponciroli and Vukadinovich steal a note from Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, as we bounce back in time, in order to re-experience the crime from the viewpoint of three other individuals either present during Will’s, um, kerfuffle, or immediately after he and Terry depart:
• Keith (Simon Rex), a masseur whose services come “with benefits,” and who was upstairs when the deed went down;
• A chill, enigmatic individual later revealed as The Colombian (José María Yazpik), a career assassin-for-hire; and
• Wallace Chetlo, who doesn’t seem surprised to find his wife dead.
These and subsequent twists heighten the film’s initially whacked atmosphere, particularly given the additional involvement of Deborah (Nina Arianda), Wallace’s accountant and lover; and a second contract assassin known only as The Irishman (Jim Gaffigan).
Yep, tiny Providence has two of them. And — the film’s best sight gag — they live across the street from each other, with facing mailboxes.
Our willingness to tolerate subsequent events, as the increasingly desperate and whacked-out behavior of burlesque cartoon characters, diminishes as the body count increases. For starters, they aren’t all cartoon characters; Patel, James and Aduba play Will, Paige and Captain Murphy as honorable folks who simply get in over their heads.
On the other hand, Gordon-Levitt’s Terry is a cheerfully profane weasel with no moral boundaries, who clearly deserves whatever he gets ... but, alas, his kind always seems to survive this sort of escalating calamity. Blake Nelson also is hilariously awful as the loathsome Wallace, while Rex’s Keith is a pluperfect doofus.
Alas, Ponciroli and Vukadinovich overplay their hand. If this film ceases to be “fun” — and that’ll depend on the individual viewer — then it becomes deplorable.
Tread carefully.
No comments:
Post a Comment