REPTILE: 2 ½ STARS. “plot devices threaten to crush movie under their weight.”
Benicio del Toro casts his line for red herrings and more in “Reptile,” a new crime drama now streaming on Netflix.
Set against the backdrop of a sleepy New England town, the action in “Reptile” begins after realtor Summer (Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz) is discovered murdered in the bedroom of one of her Scarborough, Maine show homes, with such force a knife was left embedded in her clavicle.
Found by her boyfriend, real estate bigwig Will Grady (Justin Timberlake), it is a gruesome scene described as “a nightmare” by grizzled Detective Tom Nichols (del Toro), the seasoned cop assigned to the case.
Nichols, a recent transplant from Philadelphia after an investigation into his former partner’s corruption, initially appears to be more interested in renovating the new house he owns with wife Judy (Alicia Silverstone) as he is with the murder, but he soon puts together a list of the usual suspects.
“Am I a suspect?” Will asks.
“Everyone is a suspect,” Nichols replies.
Also raising suspicions are Summer’s almost ex-husband Sam (Karl Glusman) and Eli Phillips (Michael Pitt), an eccentric man who holds a grudge against the Grady family.
Along the way Nichols goes down a rabbit hole, bedeviled by jealousy, police skullduggery and enough red herrings—fake deaths, etc—to feed an army.
“Reptile” has style to burn. Director Grant Singer, best known for making music videos for The Weeknd, Sam Smith and many others, in his big screen debut, creates a bleak backdrop for the action to unfold against. Trouble is, the story is laid on just as thick as the atmosphere.
Despite some good performances from Eric Bogosian, Michael Pitt and Ato Essandoh, and a heroically quirky turn from del Toro, “Reptile” plays like a derivative pastiche of the standard good cop in a bad situation genre. The myriad plot devices, that borrow from “Law & Order” and “Cop Land” and everything in between, threaten to crush the whole thing under their weight.
“Reptile’s” main strength is del Toro. He shares great chemistry with Silverstone, his co-star in 1997’s “Excess Baggage,” but it is his combination of tenaciousness and eccentricity that are the movie’s most original components.
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