92 min | R | July 16, 2021 | Lionsgate
Ben and Mary are star-crossed lovers from feuding families, and the movie reminds you of that with onscreen text, comic-book panels, and a narrator who will not shut up. Their old flame reignites just as a jealous fiance and a hired gun close in. It is Romeo and Juliet with handguns and the IQ of a bumper sticker.
Ben and Mary love each other and come from families that hate each other. That is the entire engine. Collin Schiffli’s film wraps this thinnest of premises in voiceover narration, animated interludes, and a wink at the camera every few minutes. It wants you to know it is clever before it has done anything clever. The result is a crime romance that mistakes self-awareness for wit and assumes the gap is funny.
Diego Boneta plays Ben as a charming screwup who never reads as dangerous or desperate. He coasts on a grin. Alexandra Daddario plays Mary with more steel than the script earns, and she keeps reaching for a depth the dialogue refuses to give her. Travis Fimmel plays Wayne, the hired gun, and turns a one-note menace into the only performer who seems to understand the movie he is in. Justin Chatwin plays Terrence the jealous fiance as pure preening cartoon, which is the register everyone else should have committed to or abandoned.
Schiffli directs from a script by Gabriel Ferrari and Andrew Barrer that leans on a narrator to explain feelings the camera should show. The shootouts are staged flat and lit bright, with squibs and slow motion that announce a budget instead of building tension. The animated cutaways and chapter-card flourishes paper over the fact that the action has no weight. Boneta and Daddario have chemistry the editing keeps interrupting for another smug aside. The visual style is all costume and no body underneath.
This is a movie built entirely from references to better movies. It quotes Tarantino, Romeo and Juliet, and a decade of post-ironic crime capers without absorbing what made any of them work. Every choice is a pose. By the time the families collide, you stop caring who lives, because the film never convinced you anyone was real to begin with.