7.5/10
Nick Nikas is mentally handicapped. When his criminal brother Connie, also not the smartest person in the room, decides that Nick is not in the right place at his day center, he “liberates” his brother and takes him along on a bank heist. You can probably guess that it all goes south from there. One bad decision leads to another, and the film escalates into a whirlwind of crime and stupidity.
Half crime drama, half dark comedy, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. At times really violent. At times really funny. In any case, the film is bloody intense. It has a fast pace, pumping synthesizer music; and my heart was pumping along. The story follows just one night of events. The mentally challenged Nick ends up in trouble, and his brother has one night to get him out of it. The sad thing is that is actions are totally misplaced.
The camerawork is very distinctive. With a tight zoom on the characters we see everything through the eyes of Connie (Robert Pattinson). Yet it isn’t easy to identify with anyone because they are all complete morons. Connie is a criminal and a manipulator, and yet he is very loyal and caring towards his brother. Pattinson does an amazing job playing a nervous, shady guy. It’s almost a shock to find out that his brother is played by the writer and director of the film, Benny Safdie, because he is so believable as a mentally handicapped guy. Wait, is that a compliment?
So, they make one bad decision after another. The whole film revolves around crime and a downward spiral of stupidity and violence. The plot is completely unpredictable, and the film has some really strange sequences. It seems to slow down in parts, then suddenly everything escalates again. The plot is also strangely disjointed and seems to move in chapters. It doesn’t go as a normal Hollywood story would go the way we recognize them.
There are in this movie three or four amazing sequences, full of tension, that are amongst the best scenes of the year. But between them you wonder where the story is going and what the point of it is. I suppose there are a couple of cycles of crime and stupidity that make up the movie, like four short stories, each time escalating to something dramatic. But these short stories don’t really tie up everything neatly. The first and last hardly connect. Therefore, at the end I am left with a confusing feeling that we started at one place and ended at a totally different story.
It’s a good feather in the cap for Robert Pattinson, who is trying to shrug off the Twilight films legacy. His relationship with his brother is an “Of Mice and Men” story, combined with Dog Day Afternoon. Yet the style is closer to those nighttime movies like Drive. Overall, it is one of the better films of the year. Electric, full of tension and energy and with a heart. The only danger is that you end up annoyed with all the characters.
A Sky of Books and Movies 