REPTILE. There are character actors and there are movie stars, and in between is Benicio Del Toro. Like many, I first became fully aware of Del Toro with The Usual Suspects (1995), written by the now-anointed Christopher McQuarrie and directed by the lately canceled Hollywood monster Bryan Singer. Standing out among a cast of standouts, Del Toro, as Fenster, seared himself into my adolescent consciousness with his mind-boggling line readings, fascinating physicality and undeniable, often discomfiting charisma. He had been working steadily for some years but The Usual Suspects proved to be a career turn, moving him out of the shadows of guest- pots and supporting roles and into prominence as one of the most compelling, confounding leading men in modern movies.
By now, of course, Del Toro has taken a few paycheck jobs; I suppose one can’t really blame him. But the bulk of his career has been defined by discernment and exploration. He elects to work with writers and directors with something to say, taking on complex, sometimes self-debasing roles and building them into indelible characters. Sometimes he’s hilarious and sometimes he’s horrifying, but he is always at the center of the frame.
Reptile is something of an anomaly on Del Toro’s CV, as he co-wrote the screenplay with Benjamin Brewer and director Grant Singer (a prolific music video helmer), for whom this is a feature debut. He plays detective Tom Nichols, recently relocated from Philadelphia to sleepier Scarborough. We learn, through some exposition that could perhaps be more delicately handled, that Tom’s previous partner had a penchant for some less-than-legal extracurriculars. Pressure on Tom and his wife, Judy (Alicia Silverstone), to protect the guy escalated rapidly to harassment, hence the move.
As the movie opens, Tom and his partner Dan (Ato Essandoh) catch a murder case that gradually reveals itself to be the outermost layer of a ball of concentric lies. There’s a family of realtors, represented primarily by the bereaved would-be fiancé Will (Justin Timberlake), a shady ex-boyfriend (Karl Glusman) and an aggrieved former real-estate client (Michael Carmen Pitt). Not to mention the perhaps too-clubby police department itself.
One could, not unfairly, accuse this plot of being boilerplate, or iterative. By the same token, though, it’s a multi-genre exercise: a procedural, a mystery and a thriller. And, in its defense, the material is elevated by Singer’s treatment of it, with his slow, deliberate camera movements, masterful sense of pace and moody incorporation of the musical score. And the cast, which also includes Frances Fisher, Eric Bogosian and Domenick Lombardozzi, is up for all of it.
Thirty years ago, this movie likely would have been a big theatrical hit, maybe even an awards contender. But then again, 30 years ago we would have had a half-dozen other grown-up thrillers with stacked casts to compare it to. And in light of the competition, perhaps we would have dwelt on the Reptile‘s sense of its own cleverness, of its occasional ellipses and somewhat heavy-handedly unexplained symbolism. Hard to say, as that age of moviedom is dead and buried.
In the relative vacuum of contemporary culture, Reptile stands above and apart from the few comparable attempts anybody has made at the form. It represents, hopefully, the beginning of something for Singer, who brings a unique, sturdy vision to bear. And, of course, it is an opportunity for us to enjoy late-period Del Toro, suffused with concern, grief and menace as he subtly dominates every scene. R. 136M. NETFLIX.
THE WONDERFUL STORY OF HENRY SUGAR; THE SWAN; THE RAT CATCHER; POISON. Roald Dahl becomes an ever-more contentious figure for his reported personal bigotry and his published work, it would seem, but I will admit here that perhaps no other single author — James Ellroy, maybe — has had a greater impact on my sense of the possibilities of imagination and literature. For a brief period, his was the most prominent voice in my head; as a pre-adolescent I read Matilda twice in one sitting. Nerds will be nerds.
Similarly, in the late, lamented 1990s (those halcyon days of probably equally problematic independent cinema) Wes Anderson became one of the new major lights of American movies, one whose next project I eagerly awaited and whose beyond-deliberate sense of visual composition and maudlin streak were deeply soothing.
It makes perfect sense that Anderson is a Dahl acolyte — I don’t mean to suggest any untoward shared ethnic notions — as he creates, in combining sight and sound, an analog to Dahl’s deceptively simple, warm embrace storytelling. He previously adapted Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) with an A-list cast and maybe too-cute Rankin-Bass style animation. Now he has taken on four of Dahl’s short stories (spanning several decades of his writing career) and staged them as a series of shorts, using the same primary cast for them all (Benedict Cumberbatch, Richard Ayoade, Ben Kingsley, Rupert Friend, Dev Patel) and setting them on always-evident sound stages.
As I age, I find I have less and less to say about Anderson’s work; I cannot say whether this reflects more poorly on me or him. That said, I should assert my continuing admiration for his work and for his unfailing imagination. But I find our tastes have diverged.
With this project, wherein characters rattle off Dahl’s prose as in-frame narrators and stage-hands dip in and out, and dialogue is addressed directly to camera, it feels more than ever that Anderson is staging a goofy arts and crafts project with his friends, a more earnest version of one of his own characters. It’s admirable but decidedly a lesser work. NETFLIX.
John J. Bennett (he/him) is a movie nerd who loves a good car chase.
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This article appears in ‘In the Interest of Justice’.