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MOB LAND

Producers: Corey Large and Bernie Gewissler   Director: Nicholas Maggio   Screenplay: Nicholas Maggio   Cast: Shiloh Fernandez, Stephen Dorff, Ashley Benson, Timothy V. Murphy, Kevin Dillon, John Travolta, Tia Dimartino, Robert Miano, Debra Nelson, Emily Tremaine, Jesse Sharp, Tommy Kendrick, Cal Johnson, King Orba, James Logan and Rob Mars   Distributor: Saban Films

Grade: C-

Every film needs an editor: in the case of this one, it’s Bryan Gaynor, whose IMDB profile lists more than forty past projects on which he’s worked since 2007.  He does a perfectly professional job, cutting the pieces of film together pretty smoothly, even if the overall pacing, apart from one hectic heist sequence, is awfully languid.

But many films really need a second editor—especially one like this, the product of a first-time director working from his own first script.  That editor would surely have advised against elements in the screenplay that were crushingly pretentious and spoken out in favor of speeding up many scenes in which the pauses are so pregnant they almost give birth before the actors resume speaking.

In short, “Mob Land” is a ponderous attempt at a hayseed film noir that insists on italicizing its nihilist view of life in dialogue as well as narrative.  A solid cast struggles to keep its pulse going.

The story is set in a small town near Tupelo, Mississippi, where Shelby Connors (Shiloh Fernandez), a race-car driver with medical issues, is struggling to support his wife Caroline (Ashley Benson and young daughter Mila (Tia Dimartino).  His brother-in-law Trey (Kevin Dillon) eggs him into joining him in robbing a local clinic that’s an opiod distribution center.

Naturally the heist goes badly.  Trey shoots up the place, and in the sloppy getaway, which Shelby was supposed to handle expertly, their car is chased by guys in a pickup truck, guns blazing.  The intervention of Sheriff Bodie Davis (John Travolta), Caroline’s uncle (who, continuing Maggio’s propensity for unremitting bleakness, has just gotten a diagnosis of terminal cancer), sends the truck into a crash that kills its occupants; Trey and Shelby get away with the dough.

Of course, the New Orleans mob that ran the clinic is not about to let the matter rest.  Ellis (Robert Miano) sends his best hit-man Clayton Minor (Stephen Dorff), a stoically menacing type with a penchant for abrupt violence and a dark view of the world he expounds on at the drop of a hat, to recover the money and deal with the robbers.  It doesn’t take him long to track Trey and Shelby down, since they were inept enough to leave a witness behind who, though wounded, lives long enough to give him their names before Minor disposes of him.

Minor eventually gets the information he needs from Trey with nonchalant brutality.  But Shelby he treats more delicately.  Promising not to allow harm to befall his family, whom he’s sent away for their safety, and even to spare his life if he follows orders, Minor takes the unwilling fellow along on his mission, introducing Shelby to set aside what he thinks are his principles to save himself and his own.  He’s teaching his “disciple,” as it were, the truths he holds about this degraded world and human nature. 

Meanwhile Bodie doggedly goes about his work, getting ever closer to the truth despite the missteps of his deputy (Timothy V. Murphy).  His plodding, world-weary manner can’t save everyone—or even anyone, as it turns out.  But the hunting skills he demonstrates in a prologue in which he brings down a deer serve him well in the film’s coda.

There’s the potential in this material for a fast-moving, viscerally exciting thriller, but that’s not what Maggio has in mind, or what he achieves.  He wants “Mob Land” to be a sort of meditation on the grim reality of this slice of Americana, suffused with hopelessness and pain even pills can’t remove, and to that end he supplies some sudden jolts of violence but prefers a grotesquely slow dance of misery and death, festooned with Minor’s pronouncements about the meaninglessness of it all, delivered between his repeated acts of murder and torture.  It makes for a depressing portrait of a dismal human landscape, offers little beyond that.

Within the limitations of that vision, the film features good work from production designer Daphne Hayes, who captures the rundown ambience of the town and Shelby’s homestead, and cinematography by Nick Matthews that manages some arrestingly composed images.  There’s also a score by David Gerald Steinberg that includes interesting touches, like a mournful duet for cello and violin (or a synthesizer simulacrum) near the close.

As for the cast, Dillon and Travolta are at opposite extremes, the former all jittery intensity and the latter utterly reserved, except when jovial with Caroline and Mila.  Dorff does the cool-as-a-cucumber killer bit well enough, even if he never really registers as creepily threatening, and Fernandez makes a sympathetic guy trapped in circumstances that spin out of control.

If you’re looking for a movie that will provide an adrenaline rush, cross “Mob Land” off your list.  If you want to be steeped in gloom and doom, or are a Travolta completest, on the other hand, this is for you.  

Now Showing

TIL DEATH DO US PART

Producers: Timothy Woodward Jr., Natalie Burn and Jeffrey Reddick   Director: Timothy Woodward Jr.   Screenplay: Chad Law and Shane Dax Taylor   Cast: Cam Gigandet, Natalie Burn, Jason Patric, Orlando Jones, Ser’Darius Blain, Pancho Moler, Neb Chupin, D.Y. Sao,  Sam Lee Herring,  Alan Silva and Nicole Arlyn   Distributor: Cineverse

Grade: D+

Natalie Burn is no Julia Roberts, and “Til Death Do Us Part” is no “Runaway Bride,” though Timothy Woodward Jr.’s movie begins with a leave-him-at-the-altar scene that suggests it might be a rom-com.  But it quickly turns into something that, while not exactly a horror movie, is certainly a horrible one, given its abundance of violence and gore, as well as its groan-inducing attempts at dark humor.

Burns plays the bride who leaves her groom (Ser’Darius Blain) unwed, fleeing the ceremony to take refuge at her late father’s posh estate.  She’s followed there by the seven groomsmen, led by the best man (Cam Gigandet); the others are played by D.Y. Sao, Sam Lee Herring, Orlando Jones, Alan Silva, and the only two to have nicknames—hulking Big Sexy (Neb Chupin) and little person T-Bone (Pancho Moler).  The groom orders them to keep an eye on her until he can arrive.

Interspersed with the “present day” scenes set at the estate are flashbacks to the trip to Puerto Rico where the couple got engaged.  While there they meet an older married couple (Jason Patric and Nicole Arlyn) at a bar, and the next morning the latter invite them for a day of fishing on their yacht.  During the day, the engaged couple’s real purpose in coming to the island is revealed.

All the characters, it turns out, are, or were, employees of an outfit called The University, which is an academy of assassins, one to which every employee is supposed to be committed for life.  And while the groom and groomsmen are meant to bring the bride back to the organization—and the altar—she has other ideas, which cause the men to aim for a more definitive outcome.

So what follows is a cat-and-mouse scenario in which each man confronts the bride, still dressed in her gown, in bloody combat, and she dispatches them one after another, often without a weapon but sometimes employing one, like a sword or—in one case—even a chainsaw.  The final battle, of course, is between bride and groom, presented as a sort of dance of death.

Burn, in fact, uses her training in dance—she performed in ballet—to pull off some agile moves, which must have been difficult in such a flowing dress.  Her acting, however, is at best rudimentary and her line deliveries stiff.  Blain tries to seem smooth but is decidedly uncharismatic as the unlucky groom, and most of the groomsmen are blandly forgettable; the exceptions are Moler and Chupin, who are intended to provide humor as the physically mismatched Big Sexy and T-Bone, but their banter is thoroughly uninspired, and their scenes slow things down to a crawl.  So do the flashbacks with Patric.  He brings a grizzled worldliness to the cynical character, but his monologues are incredibly boring, and his on-and-off sequence ends with a predictable thud rather than a clever twist.

But the worst of the lot is Gigandet, who struts about irritating his comrades—and us—by endlessly repeating his best man speech.  He strives to be suavely comic as he orders the others about and dances to a stream of period rock he plays on the audio system, failing miserably to generate anything but tedium over his hapless posing.  Woodward has done him absolutely no favors in giving him so much screen time, nor has editor Fady Jeanbart by letting his (presumably improvised) bits run on to such inordinate length.

On the other hand, Markos Keyto’s production design is actually quite elegant, and Pablo Diez’s widescreen cinematography is lush, with the Puerto Rico-set beach sequences especially attractive.  The bridal gown and tuxes designed by Katherine Hegarty and Tate Scofield are on the money, but Matthew Patrick Donne’s score is rendered pretty much insignificant by the use of popular songs on the soundtrack.

You’ll undoubtedly conclude that this repetitive movie, running only a few minutes under two hours, doesn’t depart the screen fast enough.