Monday, September 02, 2019

Fantasia 2019.51: Killerman

No, Fantasia has not actually been going on for seven weeks plus, but if it did, I suspect there are folks in Montreal who would be down for it. It would probably be too much for me to stretch my vacation time going up there, though. Still, when a Fantasia movie gets its release, and the poster even has the Fantasia logo toward the center, it's hard not to feel that if we keep Fantasia in our hearts, it can be Fantasia every day.

I didn't catch this one there, as it turned out; at the last minute I decided to stick with friends who were seeing 8, especially since that one was looking like it would be hard to catch for its second show. Turned out to be a good decision, as I liked 8 a lot and it turned out that this one got a theatrical release. That caught me by surprise - it's got a tiny distributor and I was afraid it would be bumped by NeZha - but I actually was able to guess that it was the new one from the Cash Only people by the trailer even before the title came up, and made sure I carved out a little time to see it before heading north for a big old family thing this weekend.

It's probably got just six and a half days - you know this will be one of the things that has its Thursday cut short for the early shows of It 2, especially when there were just a couple people in the theater with me opening night - and I can't say it's a great movie, but it's an honestly grimy bit of crime that doesn't necessarily crack the lineup at Boston Common at all most weeks.


* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 30 August 2019 in AMC Boston Common #6 (first-run, DCP)

Killerman opens with a nifty quote about money laundering (that the illegal drug business generates a hundred billion in revenues, and the difficulty of pushing 26 million pounds of cash through a teller's window), and a fun sequence of a money launderer transforming a banker's box full of c-notes into cashier's checks difficult to trace back to a criminal enterprise, before starting to do other things, then goes in another direction again for the finale. It's not a bait-and-switch, exactly, but maybe filmmaker Malik Bader could have spent more time with half of his intriguing set-ups and saved the others for another movie.

The money launderer we follow during that time is the aptly named Moe Diamond (Liam Hemsworth), a jeweler in New York's Bowery who knows the sorts of people who can make large cash transactions look legitimate while also being buddies with Bobby (Emory Cohen), also known as "Skunk", a small-timer who has helped him land a big job: His uncle needs $2 million a day cleaned for ten days, part of a plan to buy a building in Manhattan and go legit, to the point of having a Congressman renting space from him. Perico (Zlatko Buric) sees something off right away, which leaves Moe and Bobby with cash on hand, which Bobby suggests they use in a drug deal that offers a huge profit overnight. Trouble is, it's a trap, with corrupt cops Duffo (Nickola Shreli) and Martinez (Bader) showing up to shake them down. They're prepared enough to escape the scene, but a crash leaves Moe badly concussed - and that's the optimistic diagnosis - unable to remember his own name. Not a great condition to be in when surviving the next day means outwitting and outrunning everyone who feels they have something that does not belong to them.

As a plot device, amnesia has got to be one of the sharpest double-edged swords that a writer can draw. It's real and so cannot be completely dismissed, but uncommon enough that it almost cannot help but feel too convenient whenever it shows up in a story; the real-world randomness of brain injuries isn't quite compatible with how actions in films are assumed to have meaning. The problem here is not so much that Bader gives Moe a recovery that tracks too well with what the story needs - to the extent that anything like that happens, it's well-camouflaged - but that he cuts interesting avenues off too often. He spends the first act teaching the audience about money-laundering but then has Moe cut off from those skills and contacts, and aside from the occasional pained look, there's not much of the movie's center that would seemingly change if he had his memory. That Moe is potentially suggestible and less assertive than usual doesn't come up much until late, nor is there much time spent on just where the skills and ruthlessness he does display are coming from.

Full review on EFilmCritic

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