Producers: Matt Sukkar, Hicham Benkirane and Andrew Stevens Director: Matt Sukkar Screenplay: Carlo Bernard Cast: Duke Nicholson, William H. Macy, Tiffany Haddish, Stephen Dorff, Devon Ross, Billie Lourd, Julia Fox, Alyssa Villa, Colleen Camp, Ben Smith-Peterson, Daniel Diemer, Craig Stark, Ritchie Montgomery, Avi Avalos, Julian Antonio Delacruz, Treylan Newton, Brennan Bruso and Angel Isaac Reyes Distributor: Well Go USA
Grade: C
Matt Sukkar’s “The Deputy” isn’t a good movie—indeed, it’s kind of a mess—but it’s also rather fun, in a guilty-pleasure sort of way. The director’s debut feature is a slow-moving, convoluted crime yarn streaked with dark humor that holds one’s attention even as it lumbers to a sadly predictable conclusion.
Adapted from the 2010 novel by Victor Gischler, who’s written for actual comics as well as penning a number of books that can be classified as comic-like pulp fiction, it’s set in a dusty Oklahoma town where Toby Sawyer (Duke Nicholson) is a drowsy doofus living in a crummy trailer with his unhappy wife Doris (Billie Lourd) and infant son TJ.
Toby has a part-time deputy’s job courtesy of Sheriff Kreuger (William H. Macy), who tells him he’ll need to shape up if he hopes to go full-time. The lawman issues the warning when he rousts him out of bed to watch over the body of Luke Jordan, which is lying in the street with nine bullet casings around it. Kreuger himself has to go and inform Luke’s brothers of his killing, and he assigns his regular deputy Billy Banks (Stephen Dorff) to return to the office and start the paperwork.
Toby, who’s arrived on the scene in slovenly clothes—pajama pants and a T-shirt that looks as though it had come from a rubbish heap, on which his badge is an incongruous adornment—does watch the corpse for a bit, even tossing an old piece of plastic over it, and he shoos away a couple of inquisitive joy-riding teens (Treylan Newton and Brennan Bruso). But it’s not long before he ambles off for a quickie with his underage mistress Molly (Devon Ross), who lets him in through her bedroom window.
When Toby returns to his post, Luke’s body is gone. At this point one might expect “The Deputy” to turn into a macabre comedy like “The Trouble with Harry,” but no such luck.
Back at the office, Billy berates Toby for screwing up a simple assignment and tells him to stay there until Kreuger returns. But, of course, it’s not long before he wanders off again. At least he’s changed into his uniform.
Hearing noises from a garage, he breaks in to find a truck filled with people, obviously illegals being smuggled into the country. After talking with one of them, a boy named Oscar (Angel Isaac Reyes), he simply sends them on their way with a directive to leave town, ignoring any problems this might cause.
But cause them it does, because it puts Toby in the sights of two Mexican meanies (Avi Avalos and Julian Antonio Delacruz) cruising around in a yellow Mustang. Tracking them down leads him to a motel room with, among other things in it, a kidnapped young woman (Alyssa Villa); a gunfight results, which Toby only reluctantly engages in. Luke’s brothers (Ben Smith-Peterson and Daniel Diemer) also show up with intent to kill, for reasons that will be made clear only late in the movie. Another deputy, Amanda Jackson (Tiffany Haddish) turns up late in the going, first as an antagonist and then as an ally to Toby.
In the end everything proves to be interrelated, as a perceptive viewer might guess from the name of a cast member who has so often been a bad guy that his presence is pretty much a giveaway as to how the plot will twist. True, the role of another actor might distract you, but not for long.
The scenario Carlo Bernard has fashioned from Gischler’s book is, frankly, pretty obvious in retrospect; it’s made to seem cleverer than it actually is by structural tricks designed to obfuscate for a while, and in retrospect the details don’t really add up except if you assume the ultimate villains could magically predict how Toby would act every step of the way.
But the movie has some redeeming qualities, most notably a welcome sense of dark humor exhibited not only in the slacker characterization of Toby, whom sleepy Nicholson embodies to perfection, but in some lesser figures like the new cashier (Julia Fox) at the convenience store he frequents, or Mrs. McCarthy (veteran Colleen Camp), the clerk at at the motel. Some of the gags are very bleak indeed: the histrionic death of one of the villains should draw guffaws.
The movie also makes the most of an obviously threadbare budget. Cinematographer Alejandro Mejía fashions some dismally grubby images from Julie Toche’s production design and the drab locations (the shoot was actually in Mississippi), and though J. Xavier Velasco’s editing accentuates Sukkar’s penchant for very deliberate pacing, the sluggishness is art of the plan, as is Daniel Vildósola’s spare score.
Perhaps the greatest weakness of “The Deputy,” though, is that it wants us to believe that in spite of Toby’s manifest incompetence and irresponsibility, he’s really a good guy underneath—a point it hammers home in the end, with a twist that’s not convincing despite Nicholson’s effort to persuade us of it. This is a movie that’s worn its cynicism on its sleeve, but it turns mushy in the end.