Lowlife

(ZERO)

🎙️ EPISODE 288: 07.27.2020 I feel bad about bestowing Lowlife with the lowest score on the books: the big bad and ultra rare score of ZERO. Far be it from me to yuck anyone's yum. After all, it's not a big budget, bloated mess or the failed singular work of some notable careerist; it's clearly a smaller affair with a collection of actors I've never heard of. It's the debut film of director Ryan Prows. But... with this film sitting at a, frankly, staggering 91% Rotten Tomatoes rating, though, I feel it's my duty to 'correct the record' so to speak. The crime of being derivative is not necessarily a fatal blow and, honestly, there are plenty of examples where it doesn't bother me in the slightest (see my recent review of Palm Springs, which is as derivative as it gets!). The problem with this with movie is that it's derivative in the worst and laziest ways imaginable. For instance...

1. What passes for quirkiness or goofs is misguided at best, and cringeworthy disasters at worst. There is a character who shows up with a full-face swastika tattoo. The 'joke' is that he acts like he's black. But don't worry, he was forced to get that tattoo in prison and he's not really racist. It's bad cover for an unthinkably stupid idea which reveals itself to be so stupid two seconds into the scene. (Also, somehow unrelated: his damn face is on the movie poster, so I'm not sure why the unveiling of the swastika was set up to be some kind of shocking surprise.)

2. There's random blasts of extreme gore from the getgo. Which is fine, IF you juxtapose those images with something to contextualize and/or warrant their inclusion in an otherwise straight-ahead crime indie. However, according to Wikipedia this is "a 2017 American comedy horror crime drama thriller film," if you thought I was making up the issues with tone.

3. All of the disparate characters and ideas are, I GUESS, supposed to foster a vibe of randomness. You're reaction to this movie is supposed to be "damn! that movie was nuts!" It wears this on its sleeve. The problem is there's nothing underneath. It's as if they had an idea for a luchador who never takes off his mask, a black motel clerk in an apron wielding a shotgun and a white guy with huge-ass swastika tattoo on his face (who is actually woke), and just stopped there. You can take look at the movie poster and you've seen the movie. Nothing that happens in it matters; none of the characters are developed beyond one-line, surface levels allusions.

I'd love to pick a part each of the six (outta seven) Top Critics on Rotten Tomatoes who gave this a passing grade. Perhaps there is a level of 'seeing so many movies' that you hit a point where if a movie simply LOOKS like a movie that is alright or better, especially in that indie kinda way, then you just process it as acceptable without truly ingesting it, and move on.

I had a funny feeling when I saw five screenwriters listed on the opening credits. This did not feel like a "five screenwriter" kinda thing. It's as if each of the five saw Pulp Fiction exactly twice each and distilled the worst ideas from it into a single 90-minute feature. At the end, the luchador gives his mask to swastika guy, who–you guessed it–could really use a mask as it turns out (because of the swastika, on his face). It's not clever, but it wants so badly to be. And that's the real crime.

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 287 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 289 ⫸

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