Carrie Coon and Shea Whigham are on the loose in writer-director Jeffrey Reiner’s deft film, which mixes low-key dark humor and a whole lot of dead people.
With “Lake George,” Jeffrey Reiner makes his first independent feature as a writer-director since the 1990s, after a prolific quarter-century helming projects for the small screen. The filmmaker has cited formative viewings of classic noir films on television as an inspiration, but this twist-filled story is more like the late Ross Macdonald’s melancholic fictions of the genre: low-key, funny, depressing but empathetic tours through the labyrinths of disillusioned and corrupt Southern California lives.
Director: Hamid Antonio CastroWriter: Hamid Antonio CastroStars: Mike Markoff, Cindy Kimberly, Sophia Zimba
While there are a considerable number of dead people here, the path forged by uneasy allies Shea Whigham and Carrie Coon feels less like a thriller than a sad black comedy of errors, in which even the most violent characters have a certain pathos. It’s a consistently engaging effort that should reward discerning viewers amid the flood of flashier year-end titles. Magnet is due out in U.S. theaters and limited digital platforms on Dec. 6.
More Willie Loman than Sam Spade, middle-aged Don (Whigham) wakes up in his nondescript motel room with little reason to get out of bed beyond the suggestion that he’s running out of money. A montage of fruitless calls underscores that he’s out of options: His few remaining contacts for potential employment aren’t interested or dead, and he’s evidently estranged from his family. It’ll be a while before we understand the circumstances (including a stint in prison) that led Don to this dead end.
His last resort is a reluctant visit to his former boss Armen (Glenn Fleshler), who theoretically owes him some money. But despite living in considerable splendor due to various criminal schemes, Armen resents not being even richer and blames this former lackey for screwing it all up “so spectacularly that it cost me a lot of money.” As thug Harout (Max Casella) looks on, Armen offers a deal: he’ll pay the sum owed if Don “takes care of” his seemingly duplicitous mistress-turned-business partner Phyllis (Carrie Coon) – that is, by killing her. Our hero is no cold-blooded killer, but he has no choice in the matter, so he reluctantly begins to stake out the prey.
Phyllis, in her mid-forties, is first seen tending to an elderly woman outside a nursing home. Once kidnapped, she reinforces the notion that she’s an innocent party in all this, claiming to be nothing more than the victim of Armen’s fickle affections and the jealous hostility of his henchmen. Don takes her to a remote enough desert location, but she can’t bring herself to do so; instead, he tells her that she must simply disappear, for both their sakes. Phyllis recovers from the mortal danger with astonishing speed, though. She soon convinces her would-be killer that, given her inside knowledge, they can easily rob Armen of the riches hidden in the residences of various cronies and then “disappear” into new identities and locations.
Needless to say, none of this goes as smoothly as she promises. And all the while, the supposedly wronged Phyllis grows more confident, brazen and imposing with every step. For a person who says she’s never killed anyone before, she sure proves unconcerned about crossing that line… repeatedly.
As it meanders from Glendale to the high Sierras, with plenty of house and motel room robberies in between, “Lake George” deploys familiar pulp noir tropes, but doesn’t use them to hit the usual notes. There’s little sexual tension between the central couple; He's too conventional for her, and desire may be one of the many things cruel fate has already removed from Don. While Phyllis's actions may increasingly seem like those of a classic, deceitful femme fatale, neither the script nor Coon's matter-of-fact performance show it that way: her actions are driven by a self-interest so carefree and compulsive that she probably can't conceive of it as "bad."
She keeps saying "I'm a good person," though we gradually realize that Phyllis is someone who doesn't actually believe in such things. She comes to believe it of Don, if only as a weakness. Whigham's hollow man, with barely the will to live after he's stupidly alienated everything he cares about, is such a subtly drawn character that the actor's expressions of still-contained happiness at the end have great poignancy.
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