Summary
The housing crisis, foreclosures, and abandoned real estate developments have turned Cassie’s town into the wild west. When another financially ruined individual, Sonny, accidentally kills her boss in front of her, Cassie has to learn to stand up for herself and never give in to her would be captor and killer.
Comedy?
Working at a video store, I watch a lot of straight to DVD movies come and go. Usually they aren’t funny, scary, well acted, well shot, or well written. I’ll admit it makes me a little trigger shy when it comes to picking up a movie I haven’t heard of but I’m a Danny McBride (“Your Highness”)fan so I found myself hoping this in on Sunday night.
At first, I was a little thrown. This movie stars Danny McBride but he doesn’t really show up real quick and he’s not the lead. Instead I seemed to be watching a pretty depressing drama about a woman, Cassie (Rosemarie DeWitt, “Sweet Virginia”) who is massively in debt and actually works for the very real estate swindler who sold her a home she couldn’t afford. She’s divorced. Her daughter doesn’t want to live with her. Everyone thinks she should move to another town and give up on trying to make it work where she is at. Hardly the comedy that I thought I was getting into.
Then, McBride shows up. Sonny is going through many of the same things Cassie is but rather than keeping his nose to the grindstone and trying to bear up he has lost it and is ready to give Cassie’s boss, the real estate agent, a piece of his mind. This confrontation gets out of hand and Sonny accidentally kills the real estate agent and is forced to kidnap Cassie.
The main dynamic of the film is really between Cassie and Sonny. Sonny could just kill Cassie and hide the bodies but Sonny doesn’t believe he is a bad guy. He killed the agent by accident and he doesn’t want to hurt Cassie. He just needs to be convinced that he can trust her before he lets her go. This is the main funny of the film. Watching an out of control maniac commit atrocities and then try to maintain his moral innocence.
Cassie, on the other hand, is being stretched to not give in to his sob story and realize her own ability to survive. As a result the movie becomes a sort of feminist film. Cassie may not be tough on the outside but that ends up being refreshing. She’s tough on the inside. She never gives up or despairs or falls under Sonny’s spells of righteous diatribe.
Other movies could learn from this one. A tough chick doesn’t need to know karate, have a bunch of guns, or swear like a sailor to be tough. She just needs to be resilient and unflappable. She needs to stare danger in the face and not blink.
I wish I could say that the film rises up to be better than it has any right to be but it doesn’t. It’s ok. I liked it but I’ll never watch it again and you aren’t really missing much if you skip it. That is a shame because I do think Cassie’s character is just a shade deeper than most films of this ilk but just a shade. In the end, it still feels like a comedy that only half cares if it is funny.
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