I’ve often joked about once well-regarded actors who, in the later stages of their careers, have found a home in lousy mid-level crime movies that go straight-to-digital. Most of them seem embarrassed about it. Not Russell Crowe. The Oscar-winning actor is clearly having the time of his life. Sure, he can still give you commanding dramatic performances as he recently did in Nuremberg, but he can also just have a ball showing his comedic chops in something like The Get Out, in which he’s an absolute riot as an Albanian nightclub owner trying to escape the ridiculous criminal life he’s made for himself in Los Angeles.
Directed by Derrick Borte, The Get Out is a lot like those other crime thrillers I alluded to earlier. They always have the lead actor doing voiceover, usually to cover for their lack of actual screen time. Not so much the case here. Crowe is pretty much everywhere as Manco Kapac, an elder gentleman who swaggers into his own bustling nightclub with an armload full of women. Everyone there knows him, of course, and he comes across like a mobster entering their favorite Italian joint. Teresa Palmer plays his much-younger girlfriend, Sunny, who also keeps track of the club’s books. It’s clear that Manco is eyeing retirement, a feeling that gets exacerbated when he suffers cardiac arrest while banging his energetic young lover. It probably doesn’t help that he double-dosed on Viagra. Even worse, when Manco gets robbed at gunpoint while making a deposit, the urge to leave the business gets stronger.
The Get Out is one of those movies where every cartoonish character has an agenda, and they generally make things worse for themselves constantly. Luke Evans is a total goof as Joe, a middle-aged hotshot who sings badly at karaoke and takes meetings while getting a rubdown. Aaron Paul is Jeff, a community college professor who gets in over his head after writing a terrible college paper for the son of an FBI agent, who then proceeds to blackmail him. Nina Dobrev is Carrie, a Point Break-obsessed bank teller who also then blackmails Jeff after he makes a cash deposit of $9,999, just shy of the amount that gets automatically flagged as suspicious.
The film is based on Thomas Perry’s book, Strip, which Borte and co-writer Daniel Forte adapt with all of its heavy Quentin Tarantino and Elmore Leonard influences. Fans of star-studded crime capers such as The Whole Nine Yards will get a kick of the tongue-in-cheek tone, which is when The Get Out is best. Attempts to add a real sense of danger fall flat, as they often do in this subgenre of film, because the characters are too silly to be taken seriously. That goes double for Crowe, who at one point angrily points out that Albanians never get their assholes bleached, because yes, that is a subject that comes up in conversation.
Crowe and the entire ensemble understood the assignment, which was to deliver an entertaining crime comedy that you can kick your feet up and enjoy without thinking about it too much. Frankly, I’d rather watch Crowe hamming it up in The Get Out than wasting his time on something like Gladiator II, which he thankfully avoided.
Vertical released The Get Out in select theaters June 26th and digitally on June 30th.
