OMG. Is that Alicia Silverstone (“Miss Match” 2003) kissing Benicio Del Toro on the neck? (Del Toro starred in the Wes Anderson film “The French Dispatch”) It is. And is Justin Timberlake in Polo golf pants on a sun splashed green?

They are joined by Michael Pitt, Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz (I always wondered what happened to her) and the great Frances Fisher as a glamorous real estate mother.

Our Alicia is aboard playing the bored adulterous wife of Ben. What woman would dare do such a thing?

We are writing here of Grant Singer, Benjamin Brewer and Del Toro’s dark telling of adultery, drug dealing and family real estate malfeasance.

You didn’t think the real estate work could be malfeasant? Ask Mr. Trump.

I hope it won’t annoy you if I refer to the characters by their SAG names here, so you’ll have something real to hang on here because first of all, Timberlake doesn’t look Irish, and because only the late Carleton Carpenter looked like a Will Grady.

And calling Benicio Del Toro, one of the great names in movies, “Tom Nichols” is just silly.

And to call Eric Bogosian (“Billions”) “Robert Allen?” Please.

Wasn’t there a department called “Department of Silly Names?”

We’re given this week Del Toro and Singer’s “Reptile,” — no snake, just a skin appears — a multiple murder drama. More folks here die from murder than COVID. That at least is comforting so I settled for drama.

We find ourselves in semi-suburb of Scarborough somewhere where there is nary a tick or mosquito, and adultery is as common as house flies.

In almost two hours, you’ll quickly discover who the good cops and bad cops are. A couple will fool you but the truly bad ones almost wear capes and twisty mustaches.

It begins when Timberlake discovers his wife on the floor with a carving knife stuck in her stomach, so deeply, the coroner has trouble getting it out.

Del Toro and his partner Dan Cleary (Ato Essandoh, “The Diplomat” 2023), a very Black cop in an all white town, start the investigation and it takes the entire two hours and 14 minutes of the film. And even then, we’re never sure detective Del Toro didn’t do it.

I spent two hours muttering “is Benicio really gonna hang for this?” until the last 10 minutes and then we’re told who the killer is.

So, where has Alicia been all this time?

Spoiler alert. The butler did it.

“Reptile” streams on Netflix.

J.P. Devine of Waterville is a former stage and screen actor.

Copy the Story Link

Comments are not available on this story.

« Previous

‘Jaws’ ranked as one of the great films of survival

Next »

‘Arsenic and Old Lace’ clean, corny and harmless, J.P. Devine writes