BEFORE: Oscar Isaac carries over again from "A Most Violent Year", and now that I've tabled "W.E." for later, and realized that he also voices a character in "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse", it's a fair bet I'll see - or hear - him again later this year. But I've got to keep moving on...
THE PLOT: As a 1950's suburban community self-destructs, a home invasion has sinister consequences for one seemingly normal family.
AFTER: This was pitched as a sort of a dark comedy, and that's often a really vague description, what exactly does that mean? Is it going to be more "dark" or more "comic"? But as the story played out, it started to have something of a "Fargo"-like vibe to it, so when the closing credits said the story was written by Joel and Ethan Coen, I wasn't really surprised at all, things then started to make more sense. Those guys have really found the middle ground between comedy and tragedy over the years, even if sometimes it leans a little more toward comedy, like in "Raising Arizona", and sometimes a little more toward tragedy, like in "No Country for Old Men". In fact, they wrote part of this screenplay way back in 1986, right after "Blood Simple" came out. Jeez, do those guys have many more 30-year old screenplays lying around, just waiting to be turned into movies?
I should say that's half the story here, because that old screenplay contained the "family crime" story, which got mixed with another screenplay about the black family moving in to an all-white neighborhood, and what that led to. So two scripts got Frankenstein-ed together here, which maybe explains why the structure here feels a bit off. The separate tales are made to run concurrently here, and they mix together just a little bit, but that's not how either story was initially designed. It's a bit like cooking two meals in the same pot, inevitably they're going to mix together and that's probably going to affect the taste of both in the end. Whether that resulting taste is good or bad is ultimately up to the diners, or the audience.
But though half of the screenplay was written in the 1980's, it really hearkens back to the 1950's, and it reminds me of the stories of John M. Cain, who wrote "Double Indemnity" and "The Postman Always Rings Twice". Even though some think of the 1950's as the Best Decade Ever, with the poodle skirts and the jukeboxes and the leather jackets, Elvis and Buddy Holly and Eisenhower's era of good feelings, there was a lot going on that wasn't so great, like spousal abuse and child abuse and so much racism. And if you believe Cain, then part of that American Dream was figuring out how to kill your family members and collect the sweet insurance money. But was that really a widespread practice, or just another pulp fiction convention, which then became a Hollywood movie staple?
And that brings me back to the mixing of the two screenplays, because the film opens with people finding out that they've got an African-American family living in their suburban idyll, and not reacting very well. Then the story shifts to the home invasion plot, and since something just didn't feel right about the home invasion, I incorrectly assumed that the whole thing was being staged in order to frame the black neighbors for a crime. It seemed a bit crazy that someone should go to that much trouble to get rid of their neighbors, but since I misread a cause and effect relationship due to the timing of the events, you can kind of see how I jumped to that conclusion. But, it turned out that there was something hinky going on, so I was wrong, but for the right reasons.
Which is fine, but I strongly suspect that once everything is revealed, and everyone's motivation for doing what they did is out in the open, if you were to go back and watch the beginning again with that knowledge in mind, something's just not going to add up. You just don't get to the goal you want with a plan like that, that's all I'm saying. Not now, not then. So this is a throwback to an alternate past that I'm hoping never existed, or else the good old days weren't really all that good to begin with.
Also starring Matt Damon (last seen in "Deadpool 2"), Julianne Moore (last seen in "Kingsman: The Golden Circle"), Noah Jupe, Glenn Fleshler (also carrying over from "A Most Violent Year"), Alex Hassell (last seen in "Cold Mountain"), Megan Ferguson (last seen in "The Disaster Artist"), Jack Conley (last seen in "Gangster Squad"), Gary Basaraba (last seen in "The Accountant"), Michael D. Cohen, Karimah Westbrook, Leith Burke, Tony Espinosa (last seen in "The Birth of a Nation"), James Handy (last seen in "Logan"), Steven Shaw, Don Baldaramos, Nancy Daly, Richard Kind (last heard in "Inside Out").
RATING: 5 out of 10 archival news interviews
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