‘Riff Raff’ Review: Jennifer Coolidge, Bill Murray and Ed Harris Labor Over a Crime Comedy That Doesn’t Deserve Them

The first question that pops up in connection to Dito Montiel’s dark crime comedy about a messy family reunion, Riff Raff, is how in hell he assembled such a cast of proven talents. Even if they never really mesh as an ensemble, there are pleasures to be had watching an Ed Harris–Bill Murray face-off, Pete Davidson as a depressed gangster, Gabrielle Union classing up the joint and Jennifer Coolidge bringing the tone crashing down as a sloppy drunk with a mouth like a trucker and a raging libido.

Had all those assets been funneled into a movie with some tonal consistency and a script that built credible relationships, the result might have been a nasty bit of fun. Instead, it wobbles awkwardly between creeping mob menace and scrappy sitcom, inching toward a violent climax that still doesn’t acquire cohesion. Montiel, who remains best known for his 2006 autobiographical first feature, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, has seldom shown the lightest of touches, and this bloody spin on the home-for-the-holidays gathering doesn’t break that pattern.

Related Stories

Movies

TIFF Film '40 Acres' Facing Claims by IATSE Over Alleged Unpaid Crew, Vendors

Movies

'Meet the Barbarians' Review: Julie Delpy's Middling Refugee Comedy Has Its Heart in the Right Place

Reading Montiel’s doozy of a director’s statement, the thought arises that he might be a great pitchman. He likens reading John Pollono’s script to stumbling on an undiscovered Mamet play, then offers up a bunch of inspirational references to make your head spin — Goodfellas, No Country for Old Men, Reservoir Dogs, Blue Velvet and A History of Violence. It’s good to aim high.

He also tosses in a nod to The White Lotus and … Virginia Woolf? It’s unclear if he means the English modernist author who took her own life or the scathing Edward Albee marital warfare drama whose title is a play on words built around Woolf’s name. Given how the author is mentioned in conjunction with Coolidge, I’m guessing the latter, and sure, there’s a vague Martha quality in her character, Ruth.

But if you can spot anything but the palest imitative shadow of the idiosyncratic films crowding Montiel’s vision board, you have sharper eyes than mine. Maybe it all sounded more convincing at the casting stage.

“It’s amazing what family is willing to do for each other,” says DJ (an appealing Miles J. Harvey), the innocent observer who provides intermittent voiceover narration. That defining statement ties the film directly to Montiel’s interests dating back to his debut, exploring the volatile dynamics of fragmented families touched by crime. But the new one seems constantly at war with itself over whether to commit to the thriller or comedy side, ending up half-cooked in both.

The opening has sweet-natured DJ nervously pointing a gun at the head of Vincent (Harris), the man who has been a loving stepfather to him since marrying his mother, Sandy (Union). “Family can be complicated. Things go wrong,” says DJ as Montiel rewinds to the beginning to see what brought them to that tense moment.

DJ, who’s about to go off to Dartmouth, is a science geek whose thoughtful nature can be discerned from the “Highly Detailed Topographical Map” he has designed for visitors to the family’s remote Maine vacation home, where the action unfolds from Christmas through New Year’s. That map will later be a key plot point when it gets into the wrong hands.

Vincent is not at all pleased when his rattled son Rocco (Lewis Pullman) turns up unannounced with his very pregnant Italian girlfriend Marina (Emanuela Postacchini) — thanks to the two actors’ chemistry, the only believable relationship in the movie. The news that he’s about to become a grandfather does nothing to soften Vincent’s disposition.

He’s even more angered when they haul in his unconscious ex-wife Ruth from the car and drop her on the couch like a sack of potatoes. Once she’s awake, Ruth proceeds to hit the booze, hit on Vincent and pocket Sandy’s expensive cosmetics.

Montiel deftly interweaves flashbacks to provide some history. We see from DJ’s amusing previous encounter with Ruth that she’s been sour and mean for a while now, probably since the marriage ended. We sit in on Sandy’s introduction of Vincent to her well-heeled parents, who remain civilized but disapprove of their daughter marrying down. We learn the touching story of how Rocco and Marina got together. And most importantly, we witness Rocco being forced to protect his family, which puts him on the hit list of stone-cold career criminal Lefty (Murray).

It’s obvious from his dealings with a folksy old general store owner that Lefty means business. Vincent goes back far enough with him to know it’s only a matter of time before he turns up on their doorstep with his stooge Lonnie (Davidson) and bodies with bullet holes start piling up. Murray’s deadpan delivery is put to good use when Lonnie argues that two perky neighbors at Vincent and family’s regular home don’t need to be iced: “I would categorize these as a must-kill,” Lefty replies.

Pollono wrote David Gordon Green’s under-appreciated drama Stronger, which starred Jake Gyllenhaal as a real-life Boston Marathon bombing survivor. In addition, he directed a film adaptation of his well-oiled play set in a grease-monkey garage, Small Engine Repair, a vehicle for Jon Bernthal on both stage and screen that worked better in its original form.

He can write crackling dialogue even if his grasp of character and relationships is not at its best here. Riff Raff is a flat-looking movie with a tone that’s all over the map and a strong cast mostly left floundering. Neither the criminal element nor the bougie respectability Vincent has acquired through Sandy is terribly convincing.

Even before any blood is shed, you wonder how Sandy, who’s not encountering Vincent’s trashy former family for the first time, never guessed there might be something murkier in her “contractor” husband’s past. But then that would rob the film of an emotional note in the violent climactic stretch, which makes the already muddled tone even more muddled.