Reptile movie review & film summary (2023) – Roger Ebert

Benicio Del Toro slinks and weaves by means of Grant Singer’s debut thriller “Reptile,” however the movie struggles to develop a assured character round him, in the end coming aside on the seams. Clearly impressed by David Fincher’s meticulousness—Singer too is a music video vet and has labored with The Weeknd, Skrillex, Sam Smith, and plenty of extra—“Reptile” is overly mannered and treasured with its particulars, however its greatest misstep is its failure to grasp that procedurals must get narratively tighter and never simply extra convoluted. Del Toro all the time brings it, and that is really considered one of his extra intriguing performances in a very long time, however one persistently needs that it was in a film that knew what to do with it.

Will Grady (Justin Timberlake) is a Scarborough actual property mogul relationship an agent named Summer time (Matilda Lutz). They flip foreclosures on costly houses within the space beneath the watchful eye of Will’s mother, Camille (Frances Fisher), and there appears to be some brewing stress within the relationship. At some point, Will meets Summer time at a home she’s displaying and finds her brutally murdered.

The suspects line up shortly for Detective Tom Nichols (Del Toro) and his companion Dan Cleary (Ato Essandoh). First, Grady couldn’t be creepier—Timberlake leans means too onerous into the slimy silver spoon child background of the type of dude who strains up a brand new girlfriend who appears to be like quite a bit like his useless one nearly instantly. Will is clearly into some shady shit, however he discovered the physique, proper? Or did he? Might it’s Summer time’s soon-to-be ex-husband Sam (Karl Glusman)? He, too, is sketched as a couple of playing cards wanting a full deck, launched on CCTV footage slicing a stranger’s hair so he can flip it into artwork. Yeah, he’s bizarre. That’s not it! The cavalcade of creeps on the suspect listing additionally consists of Eli Phillips (Michael Pitt), a man whose dad obtained screwed on a Grady deal. Did he kill Summer time to get revenge?

As if that trio of potential murderers isn’t sufficient, the script by Singer, Benjamin Brewer, and Del Toro himself fills out a large forged with the individuals in Tom’s orbit, together with his spouse Judy (an efficient Alicia Silverstone), who helps him work angles on the case in among the movie’s greatest scenes. She’s fearless and intellectually engaged in discussing the thriller. She is aware of and loves Captain Robert Allen (Eric Bogosian), Tom’s boss, who’s launched receiving an MS prognosis. Sure, that is a type of scripts the place everybody has an immediately identifiable trait that tries to take a conventional character only a bit left of middle. It is all over-written, exaggerated stuff that solely reminds you that you simply’re in a film.

After all, it’s completely nice to concentrate on a author’s voice and director’s eye—nobody would say somebody like Fincher quietly observes—however the issues of “Reptile” comes right down to fashion vs. imaginative and prescient. There’s loads of fashion right here, however it by no means appears like something coheres into an precise imaginative and prescient. The good Mike Gioulakis (“It Follows,” “Cut up”) slides his digicam by means of these imposing areas, however to what finish? Does it imply something? The considerable fashion of “Reptile” is more and more hole as its overlong 134 minutes unfold. “Reptile” tries to carry onto too many issues without delay and lands none of them, leaving subplots unresolved and characters inconsistent.