3 hours ago
6
This odd duck of a movie is part bloody gangster revenge drama and part family home-for-the-holidays comedy; it is brutally commingled as if thrown together by a high-speed collision. Predictably, the result is a bit of a mess, but there are redeeming features that make it much more watchable than many early reports might have suggested.
For instance, the film contains arguably Bill Murray’s best semi-dramatic performance in years, on a par with his melancholy, haunted and yet still droll-dry turns in Rushmore and Lost in Translation. Here he plays Leftie, an east coast mobster, once a bit of a capo but now semi-retired ever since he handed over the reins of the family business to his son Johnnie (Michael Angelo Covino). Something explained only later has brought Leftie back into the killing people business, with assistance from nerdy murderer-in-training Lonnie (Pete Davidson). The two of them are heading up to Maine to find their mark, which necessitates a few practice kills along the way; these make Leftie sad but not so sad he would consider not killing.
That’s obviously the gangster stuff; the family comedy element features an extended, blended brood that includes contractor Vincent (Ed Harris), his uptight, bougie second wife Sandy (Gabrielle Union) and their dorky teenage son DJ (Miles J Harvey). Their plans to enjoy New Year’s Eve are interrupted when Vincent’s previous family shows up unexpectedly. That includes his blowsy ex-wife Ruth (Jennifer Coolidge, also on excellent form), Vincent and Ruth’s grownup son Rocco (Lewis Pullman), and Rocco’s very pregnant girlfriend Marina (Emanuela Postacchini). Rocco and Marina have got mixed up in something bad and are on the run, and they have brought Ruth along with them for her own safety – after they managed to drug her with a festive cocktail of Percocet and sambuca. Soon, long submerged secrets bob to the surface where they explode like depressurised deep-sea creatures.
The film requires abrupt tonal pivots to manoeuvre around the plot’s blackest bits, and director Dito Montiel and his team don’t quite manage to pull it off. The indifference to the suffering of innocent bystanders becomes an increasingly repugnant issue; it feels at times like one of Quentin Tarantino’s shonkier, uglier late-career efforts or, even worse, like a Tarantino-imitator trying to ape their hero’s swagger. But the cast’s enthusiasm, especially that of Coolidge and Murray who are willing to play the most loathsome of people, makes up for a lot.
