I remember some of my friends liking this movie when it came
out a couple of years ago, but I never heard much else about it and didn’t get
around to watching it until now. I’m glad I didn’t let it slip past me
completely, because it’s a pretty good little film.
Set in some unnamed small city in the Southwest, SMALL TOWN CRIME opens with sad-sack former cop Mike Kendall (John Hawkes) trying to find a job. We quickly find out that Kendall is an alcoholic and was kicked off the force because of a tragic shooting with which he was involved. (I immediately thought of Lawrence Block’s Matt Scudder and Donald Westlake’s Mitch Tobin . . . which are not bad influences at all, mind you.) Kendall finds the body of a badly injured young woman who’s suffered a beating or been hit by a car or something similar, and when she dies in the hospital after he rushes her there, he decides he’s going to find out what happened to her. Having seen countless private eye movies and read countless private eye novels, we know what’s going to happen, of course. The more digging Kendall does, the more complicated the case becomes, and the more dangerous his efforts become for him. He even gets hit over the head and knocked out at one point, admittedly a PI cliché but one that I love and am always happy to see. The twists and turns eventually lead to a very satisfying ending.
The cast is excellent in this movie, with Hawkes, usually a supporting actor, doing a great job in the lead for a change. The always dependable Robert Forster shows up, Anthony Anderson and Clifton Collins Jr. are on hand, and the beautiful Caity Lotz is always worth watching. The photography captures the southwestern setting very well, and the script and direction by brothers Eshom and Ian Nelms blend together almost perfectly. There are a couple of lapses in logic, but nothing to quibble about too much. I never heard of the Nelms Brothers before, but based on this movie, I might have to seek out more of their work.
Overall, SMALL TOWN CRIME is one of the best films I’ve seen recently. If you like hardboiled private eye movies (and who doesn’t?) and haven’t seen it yet, it’s very much worth watching.
Set in some unnamed small city in the Southwest, SMALL TOWN CRIME opens with sad-sack former cop Mike Kendall (John Hawkes) trying to find a job. We quickly find out that Kendall is an alcoholic and was kicked off the force because of a tragic shooting with which he was involved. (I immediately thought of Lawrence Block’s Matt Scudder and Donald Westlake’s Mitch Tobin . . . which are not bad influences at all, mind you.) Kendall finds the body of a badly injured young woman who’s suffered a beating or been hit by a car or something similar, and when she dies in the hospital after he rushes her there, he decides he’s going to find out what happened to her. Having seen countless private eye movies and read countless private eye novels, we know what’s going to happen, of course. The more digging Kendall does, the more complicated the case becomes, and the more dangerous his efforts become for him. He even gets hit over the head and knocked out at one point, admittedly a PI cliché but one that I love and am always happy to see. The twists and turns eventually lead to a very satisfying ending.
The cast is excellent in this movie, with Hawkes, usually a supporting actor, doing a great job in the lead for a change. The always dependable Robert Forster shows up, Anthony Anderson and Clifton Collins Jr. are on hand, and the beautiful Caity Lotz is always worth watching. The photography captures the southwestern setting very well, and the script and direction by brothers Eshom and Ian Nelms blend together almost perfectly. There are a couple of lapses in logic, but nothing to quibble about too much. I never heard of the Nelms Brothers before, but based on this movie, I might have to seek out more of their work.
Overall, SMALL TOWN CRIME is one of the best films I’ve seen recently. If you like hardboiled private eye movies (and who doesn’t?) and haven’t seen it yet, it’s very much worth watching.
6 comments:
This is a good one, and I wanna see a sequel about Forster and Hawkes roaming the heartland solving crimes as P.I.'s.
I would definitely watch that.
Glad you caught this film. It’s a good one.
I've not heard of this one, but I'll track it down.
Just ordered a copy from amazon. It sounds like it may have film noir elements.
It's streaming on Netflix.
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