Producers: Molly Smith, Thad Luckinbill and Trent Luckinbill   Director: Grant Singer   Screenplay: Grant Singer, Benjamin Brewer and Benicio Del Toro   Cast: Benicio del Toro, Justin Timberlake, Alicia Silverstone, Michael Carmen Pitt, Ato Essandoh, Domenick Lombardozzi, Karl Glusman, Matilda Lutz, Mike Pniewski, Thad Luckinbill, Sky Ferreira, Owen Teague, Catherine Dyer, James Devoti, Michael Beasley, Frances Fisher and Eric Bogosian   Distributor: Netflix

Grade: C+

Veteran music video and commercial director Grant Singer dives deep into David Fincher waters—especially “Se7en”—with his first feature, a brooding police procedural co-written with Benjamin Brewer and his star Benicio del Toro.  As befitting its title, “Reptile” slithers about, smoothly for the first hour or so; sadly, in the second it twists itself into such pretzel formations in an attempt to surprise that by the end the ludicrousness has overwhelmed the mood it worked so hard to establish. 

Del Toro is Tom Nichols, a detective on the squad of the small town of Scarborough, Maine.  He and his wife Judy (Alicia Silverstone) have moved there from Philadelphia, where Tom had been tarred by a scandal involving his corrupt partner.  Now he’s paired with Detective Tom Cleary (Ato Essandoh), who’s green but eager.  They work under easygoing Captain Allen (Eric Bogosian), who in turn answers to Chief Graeber (Mike Pniewski).

The squad is rocked by a horrific murder.  Wealthy Will Grady (Justin Timberlake) finds the body of Summer Elswick (Matilda Lutz), his partner both in bed and in a realty business, in one of the houses they’d been showing; she’d been brutally stabbed in an apparent crime of passion.  Tom, as the big-city guy with the most experience dealing with such atrocities, is assigned to lead the investigation. 

Suspects abound.  There’s Will, of course, who runs a local property empire with his dowager mother Camille (Frances Fisher); he admits to arguing with Summer, and is played by Timberlake with a shady look suggesting guilt.  A special agreement Summer had with the Gradys about investing her commissions also raises eyebrows.  Then there’s Sam Gifford (Karl Glusman), Summer’s ex-husband with whom, it turns out, she was still having sex.  He’s an artist who uses human hair in his work (a blonde hair was found on the victim), as well as a possible drug dealer.  And what of Eli Phillips (Michael Carmen Pitt), the greasy weirdo who claims that the Gradys bilked his family on a real-estate deal that led to his father’s death and keeps popping up at their home?  Even Renee (Sky Ferreira), Summer’s closest friend, could be involved.  And is there anything sinister in the fact that Tom himself has a recent wound on his hand?

The investigation moves slowly as Tom collects incriminating tidbits, only to have most of them quickly cast aside.  There are occasional bursts of action—one focusing on Gifford—but for the most past Singer’s approach, seconded by editor Kevin Hikman, is slow, even somnolent even as Yair Elazar Glotman’s score reminds that beneath the seemingly placid exterior nastiness is afoot.

There are occasional detours to Tom’s home life—he takes a liking to a faucet in the kitchen of one of the Grady properties and insists that it be incorporated in the remodeling of his own house being done by a handsome contractor (Thad Luckinbill) who flirts with Judy, leading Tom to threaten him at the local dance bar they all occasionally visit.  But though they bicker and joke, husband and wife are basically supportive.  The same might not be true of the macho jesting that goes among his fellow cops, one of whom, Wally (Domenick Lombardozzi) is an aggressive guy who’s starting a private security company and pressures Tom to join it.  And does Allen’s confession to Tom that he’s seriously ill mean something?  On the surface he seems fully protective of Tom, but does he have some ulterior motive?

Clearly there are enough red herrings swimming around here to fill a whole second movie, even though this one is well over two hours.  And the attempt to gather them all together in a satisfactory solution to the mystery of Summer’s murder leads to a last act that grows more and more incredible and irritating.  Nor can it be said that some threads aren’t left hanging when the crime is solved—certainly the decision-making power of some of the characters is highly questionable.  The result is a whodunit that proves frustrating in the end.

Nonetheless del Toro delivers a nuanced, lived-in turn as the world-weary, rumpled detective, and though she has less opportunity to fill out the role, Silverstone is solid as his wife.  The large supporting cast deliver incisive turns, though Timberlake seems tentative in the company of his more experienced fellows; Bogosian, in particular, brings his customary avuncular presence to Allen, and Lombardozzi is nothing if not intense, while both Pitt and Glusman make convincingly scuzzy suspects.  The movie isn’t terribly successful in establishing a sense of place, which is understandable since though set in New England it was shot in Georgia, but the visuals crafted by production designer Patrick Sullivan and cinematographer Michael Gioulakis create a persuasively glum atmosphere.

“Reptile” gets points for holding your interest, but loses them for botching the close.

Producers: Jeremy Garelick, Will Phelps, Molle DeBartolo, Mickey Liddell, Pete Shilaimon and Oz Rodriguez   Director: Oz Rodriguez    Screenwriters: Jason Concepcion and Shea Serrano   Cast: Tyler Dean Flores, Imani Lewis, Christian Vunipola, Suraj Partha, Raúl Castillo, Andrea Navedo, Dascha Polanco, Juan Abdias, Sarunas J. Jackson, Jordyn Owens, Collin Roach, Thomas Whitcomb and Alejandra Guevara   Distributor: Hulu

Grade: C+

Oz Rodriguez’s coming-of-age comedy is at once likeable but a little unsettling.  It’s basically about Miguel (Tyler Dean Flores), a high schooler trying to prove his loyalty to his long-time friends before having to leave town with his parents—a move he’s keeping secret from his buddies.  The title pretty much reveals how he hopes to do so, which is at the crux of the screenplay’s problem, which the filmmakers simply ignore by treating it as a sort of lark.

The four teens are an engaging bunch—the other three are David (Christian Vunipola), Cass (Imani Lewis) and Srini (Suraj Partha)—and the stream of genially insulting, competitive, casually crude, pop-culture-filled banter that Jason Concepcion and Shea Serrano provide them with has a ring of truth, especially since under Rodriguez’s knowing hand the quartet delivers it in convincingly unexaggerated, overlapping fashion.

But they’re living in a tough area of Syracuse, New York, and the occasions for them to get into scrapes with other groups of neighborhood kids appear to be numerous; it’s not before long that one breaks out at an outdoor basketball court.  While his friends are quick to react with punches and kicks, however, Miguel hangs back—which seems out of character, since not only is he an obsessive fan of martial arts movies (fights from which he lovingly recreates in short videos with his pals) but his dad Alberto (Raúl Castillo) runs a gym filled with boxers training for ring action.  But Alberto, a straight-arrow sort, impresses on the group early on that there’s a difference between boxing and fighting: the one is a sport with rules, while the other is just violence—a distinction that soon becomes an important plot point.

After their latest tussle, Miguel’s friends notice something they’ve implausibly overlooked until now—that he never gets into the action with them.  He hems and haws excuses, but while his closest buddy David—a brooding, serious sort whose own father, a boxer, is dead, leading Alberto to provide help to his family—comes to his defense, the others aren’t so understanding.  Simultaneously Alberto and Miguel’s mom Lydia (Andrea Navedo) announce that the family is moving to Albany—where she’s gotten a new job—next week. 

The news leaves Miguel in a quandary.  He wants to cement his camaraderie with his pals before he has to leave them behind, but how?  His rather far-fetched solution is to prove he’s no wimp to his father, and a real friend to his buddies, by getting into his first actual fight.  David isn’t so sure it’s a good idea, but Cass and Srini go for it, so long as he follows certain rules, like in boxing. It has to be with someone he knows, and who deserves it; he can’t throw the first punch; and he should steer clear of campus bully Damien Delgado (Juan Abdias).

The rest of the relatively short (barely seventy-five minute) movie involves Miguel trying to choose and opponent and getting him to start the fracas.  It proves difficult for the genial guy to identify somebody against whom he actually holds a grudge, but he does—like Adrian (Jordyn Owens), the jock who ridiculed him for having a boner, or Blake (Thomas Whitcomb), the snooty fellow who’s always making racist remarks, or Kevin (Collin Roach), who humiliated him by pointing out that the sneakers he was wearing were knockoffs of Air Jordans rather than the real thing.  At one point in desperation it’s even suggested that he face off against a girl named Claudia (Alejandra Guevara).

Rodriguez gets laughs by juxtaposing Miguel’s imagining about how each confrontation might go (done up with cartoonish martial-arts glee, though some go dark) with the actual encounter (sometimes presented as a televised event, complete with commentator), which always goes wrong in some way (Adrian, for example, has a broken arm, and Kevin makes friends by apologizing).  Inevitably he also gets into it with Delgado, though the result is that it gets him in trouble with his sympathetic teacher (Dascha Polanco). 

But though there’s occasional acknowledgement that fighting isn’t exactly the way to go (David’s objections, along with an amusing conversation Miguel has with Armando, an ex-convict pugilist played by Sarunas J. Jackson, who suggests that the kid might not be the good person he thinks he is), ultimately the movie sloughs off such concerns, and in fact ends with a brawl that brings the buddies together after a rough patch among them.

The picture also periodically adds some more serious notes, especially in a subplot in which David’s plea for Miguel’s help in studying for a SAT practice test gets lost in the boy’s determination to fight.  In the end, though, everything works out, and Miguel has learned important lessons about friendship and family.       

“Miguel Wants to Fight” is amiable and inventive, with Rodriguez and his collaborators—production designer Lauren Fitzsimmons, cinematographer Diana Matos, editors Adam Epstein and Daniel Reitzenstein, composer Rafael Lazzaro and graphics designer Monica Palmer—giving it a bouncy, eager-to-please vibe it’s hard to resist.  But its pizzazz and engaging young leads can’t entirely conceal that the movie conveys some mixed messages it never manages to sort out.