Neo noir of a particularly minimal sort, Lake George gets better the longer it’s up there on the screen, and by the time it’s hitting its closing scenes it’s almost in a zen state.
It’s largely a two-hander centred on two actors who are generally more support players than leads. Shea Whigham, brilliant in any number of other films (Eileen, Fast & Furious 9, Joker) and Carrie Coon (The Nest, Widows and a couple of Avengers movies, as Proxima Midnight).
He’s the jailbird just out after a ten-year stretch. An accidental jailbird, it transpires, who made a complete mess of a job for a Mr Big called Armen and yet still wants to be paid. Armen, arguing fairly reasonably that Don didn’t do the job and instead has caused his business endless trouble, offers Don a deal – do one small job for me and I’ll pay you. All Don, not really a career criminal at all, has to do is kill Armen’s ex, Phyllis.
So desperate Don, no prospects of a job, an ex-wife who won’t answer his calls, agrees, setting off in a smoke-belching old Mercedes to find and dispose of Phyllis, who is played by Coon as the chalk to Whigham’s cheese – she ballsy, funny, loquacious, he reticent, timid, dry.
He doesn’t kill her, of course. This seems almost written in stone. Instead they form an alliance and set out to relieve Armen of some of his ill-gotten loot. Suddenly this deceptive film gets into gear and starts motoring.
The whole thing feels tailored to the actors’ strengths. Whigham over the years has perfected his playing of anxious guys with an embolism about to pop. Coon, similarly, has a lock on smart, verbal roles.
But then writer/director Jeffrey Reiner gets it just about all right here. The nicely tuned subdued performances of Whigham and Coon are matched by unshowy camerawork. A touch of golden hour and the odd wide lens to one side, Reiner and his DP Tod Campbell (who worked together on a rake of Friday Night Lights episodes) are not being fancy. Also, Reiner’s side characters, Arnem and his henchmen, all have a salty tang – Armen (Glenn Fleshler) in his velour loungewear, his right hand man Harout (Max Casella) in his fancy shoes, the desperately horny Ashley (Nadja Fink), verbose Artie (Troy Metcalf). Almost everyone is overweight, because what do henchmen and gangster’s molls do all day – they hang around waiting.
It’s a bit like an early Coen brothers film – offbeat, good-looking, with the humour springing from situation and character, and its innocents-abroad characters getting caught up in the consequences of their own actions. Like the bit where Don and Phyllis kill a big lumbering guy, in a display of violence by Phyllis that takes Don quite by surprise, and then need to move him. How do you do that when someone’s that big? Poor Troy Metcalf is rolled and humped and treated like a sack of potatoes. Extra gruel for that man.
Reiner does it like it’s never been done before, and Coon and Whigham play it like that too. This is either audacious or mad but it works. Everyone is attentive to the basics – the plot, the acting, the casting of the minor roles. And it dangles the suggestion of a romance, as these things must, withholding withholding withholding…
Reiner’s CV is full of TV work. As well as Friday Night Lights, there’s The Affair, Dirty John and High Fidelity, among others. Whether Lake George marks the arrival of a cinematic auteur remains to be seen. But if I’d written and directed a film as good as this, I’d be expecting my agent to be taking a lot of calls.
Lake George – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2024
