The plot: Harold (David Oyelowo), a worker at pharmaceutical company Promethium, is tasked by his higher-ups Richard (Joel Edgerton) and Elaine (Charlize Theron) to go to their factory in Mexico to deliver an experimental form of medical marijuana. However, unbeknownst to Harold, it seems that Promethium's business dealings aren't all on the up and up, as the Mexican cartels are also involved in this deal. With few options and a growing number of people after him, Harold will have to think fast if he wants to get out of Mexico alive.
Oyelowo, considering he’s basically playing a
human Macguffin, does well enough at portraying the Lawful Good part of
the film’s morality scale while also getting some passable comedic mileage out
of his increasingly bizarre situations. Edgerton as his higher-up, while a bit
on the bland side as far as morally-dubious antagonists go, still manages to
wring a surprising amount of depth out of his character’s definitions,
depicting him as all things white, male and arrogant to decent effect. Theron
opposite him blows him completely out of the water, and it shows that this is
the kind of role she would want to back a production around as a producer. Both
as a comedic presence and even as a character performer in her own right, Theron
makes for not only the best laughs of the entire film but also some
surprising low-key dramatic moments as the vulgar veneer coating her slips
ever so slightly.
Sharlto Copley as Richard’s brother, aside from being the
linchpin in one of the film’s most intriguing dialogue moments where he and
Oyelowo debate the morality of St. Peter and Judas, gets to exercise his skill
as a character actor to bring forward a more refined version of Harold’s intent
as a good person being pushed into a decidedly un-good scenario through his own
character. Thandie Newton as Harold’s wife exists largely just to be part of a love web
with the main characters, and she comes across rather plain as a result. Harry
Treadaway and Amanda Seyfried as two American tourists who get caught up in the
larger events, quite honestly, don’t need to be here. Sure, Seyfried allows for
a couple decent moments with Oyelowo, but their characters are such
non-entities that I’m unconvinced that that same moment couldn’t have been
fulfilled by other, more interesting personalities that actually have a solid
purpose to be here in the first place.
Alan 'Cameron Fry' Ruck as another
pharmaceutical businessman gets some good moments next to Theron, Diego Cataño
and Rodrigo Corea as two brothers who own a Mexican motel are the closest this
film gets to genuine comic relief (and even they
don’t turn out so well) and Carlos Corona as the Beatles-loving cartel leader
manages to get across the right amount of comedy and menace that that description would entail.
While Joel Edgerton has been making some serious power moves
in Hollywood over the last several years, this is easily the most high-profile thing his brother Nash (the film’s
director and co-producer) has been attached to. Aside from being quite a
prolific stuntman, working on quite a few of his brother’s films as his stunt
double, his only other feature-length effort to date is The Square. While that
film definitely showcased both Nash’s abilities as a director and Joel’s
aptitude for scripting, it was also decidedly darker and a lot more
straight-faced than something pushing for dark comedy as much as this does.
That level of inexperience is kind of evident in how the tone for this film
seems to be all over the place. There are all of no smooth transitions, or even transitions full-stop, between the
murkier crime moments and the more sneering comedic moments, meaning that we’ll
jarringly go from a drug runner talking about how overrated Sgt Pepper’s Lonely
Hearts Club Band is to him ordering his men to cut off a person’s toe.
What’s worse is that it’s quite clear that Nash, or at the very least the
writers, were far more interested in the noir side of the story than the
comedy, meaning that while there are a couple decent chuckles to be had
(primarily thanks to Charlize Theron), they are few and far between.
But even with that in mind, the crime aspect of the story
feels quite off as well. This kind of chess-piece noir flick is rather
commonplace by this point: A bunch of morally ambiguous characters taking
action without knowing everything going on around them, leading to a series of
unfortunate coincidences where they end up at the wrong place at the wrong
time, all while the central character looks aghast at just how many people are
gunning for him. It has a definite Coen Brothers-esque feel to it, particularly
films like Burn After Reading and even The Big Lebowski in how a lot of the
‘criminal action’ is derived from most of the characters being completely in
the dark about each other. Hell, with how it delves into certain areas of moral
questioning, showing Harold to be the only nice guy in a collection of
opportunistic alphas, it feels like bits of it tap into the more intriguing
parts of a given Coen Brothers production.
However, that feeling is somewhat
shot in the foot by looking at the people attached to this as writers. First is
Anthony Tambakis, who has worked with Joel Edgerton in the past on the
incredibly sloppy Jane Got A Gun, and the second is Matthew Stone, a writer who
has actually worked with the Coens before. Problem is that Stone gave the Coens
Intolerable Cruelty, easily one of the worst films they have ever made. That
feeling of Diet Coen throughout this film starts to make a bit more sense with
that in mind.
But that ultimately doesn’t answer the question of why this
ultimately doesn’t work, and that can be pinned down to a single point: Focus.
The Edgertons may not be the most original and ground-breaking filmmakers out
there, but what they lack in ingenuity, they make up for in sheer talent as they
are more than capable of spinning familiar stories into something effective.
Unfortunately, nothing here feels like the right things were given emphasis for
that prospect to work out. For as star-studded as the cast is, a hefty fraction
of the characters they’re portraying either don’t need to be here in the first
place or are portrayed in a way that doesn’t make us as invested in their
stakes as we should be. Whatever genuinely compelling aspects are present here,
like the underlying notions of what it means to be a ‘man’ that comes out of
Richard’s dialogue or the possible moral ambiguity of Elaine or even the moral
ponderings around the plot at large, they are shown fleetingly while the
production as a whole sticks to quantity over quality. I’d rather have just a
couple of really well-rounded characters, which this film definitely has, than
a wide selection of either really good or really pointless to watch shuffle
around the board.
All in all, this is a bit of a letdown. The cast, as good as
some of the actors are, feels like a bunch of corporate CEOs being sent to the
mail room: Overqualified for the rather thankless tasks they have been given.
The writing shows the same sense of wearing one’s influences on its sleeves
that have come to define the work of the Edgerton brothers, but it feels like
Nash and the writers were pulling all of the wrong ideas from those influences,
not sticking to the areas that actually work for this story. As a comedy, it’s
pretty lacklustre with only a handful of genuinely funny moments, and as a
crime caper, it’s too disjointed to get across any solid points or even to make
the most out of this already well-worn premise. As much as this film could
potentially give the audience some things to ponder, like its look at differing
moral standards or even looking at the difference between American
pharmaceutical drug-dealing and Mexican cartel drug-dealing, it’s too diluted
to be of any real use. Joel Edgerton may have confirmed his status as an
exceptional filmmaker, whether he’s acting, writing or directing, but his dear
brother still has some ways to go.
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