- Mob Land
- Written and Directed by Nicholas Maggio
- August 4, 2023
A desperate man robs a pill mill with his brother-in-law, alerting an enforcer for the local New Orleans mafia.
There was a point when John Travolta had a strong and very viable movie career. Heck, there were two points when he had a strong and very viable movie career. Post Saturday Night Fever and post Look Who’s Talking he had quite the career high. Currently though not so much. Much like Steven Seagal, despite no noticeable financial hits or anything of critical acclaim, he is still churning out movies on the regular.
After watching his latest effort I cannot call it terrible but great or even good? No. ‘Adequate’ is perhaps the most accurate word available to me in the English language. This is one of those movies filled with a great many s****y people doing s****y things to others. And it all occurs in a very redneck area that borders on backwoods in how they act with strangely not backwoods elements.
With pretensions of substance and character depth, Mob Land is one of those movies that treats the area in which it lives and the characters that live there more as caricatures than it does as real. Sometimes it pushes a nearly comical parody version of these people and their lives which says more about writer/director Nicholas Maggio than anything.
Englewood, New Jersey born John Travolta of all people is small town Louisiana sheriff Bodie Davis who works in a small-town police department that appears to have only two people-him and his deputy named Dan (Timothy V. Murphy) yet the town looks a little too big for that small of a department. This is not a collection of houses with a convenience store but seems to have a small retail and industrial base to it. Bodie knows all the right people considering just about everyone involved in the story to one extent or another is known to him. Not necessarily as a criminal but as an individual who he runs into regularly.
His nephew Shelby (Shiloh Fernandez) is suffering from Parkinson’s (though I don’t remember that being mentioned until close to the end of the movie) and is struggling to make ends meet for his family by…driving? He and his brother-in-law Trey (Kevin Dillon) rob a pill clinic they believe to be easy pickings but it’s part of a larger operation for the mob. How did that not occur to them? Somehow-and I do mean somehow since they never give a way-a hitman (Stephen Dorff) tracks them both down and the film is mostly about killing off the assorted witnesses since largescale murder always hides things well.
What strikes me is this movie looks like it was a blatant attempt to be a critical and awards darling given everything in it. It has elements of Hell or High Water as well as Out of the Furnace. Do not worry if you do not know about the latter. I think the people involved even forgot about it. What a snoozefest that was. Point is both were intended as critical darlings and writer/director Nicholas Maggio is going for that first instead of trying to just tell a good story.
The story is tried and true territory. It concerns small town drugs with larger connections. The characters who caused the problems are in dire straits and the cop who finds himself in the middle investigating has been there and done that and is saddled with his own share of problems.
Having said all that Mob Land is not bad. It’s certainly nothing great and nothing exceedingly original but it’s not bad. It’s well acted and well scripted and the direction is good. It’s just that it’s nothing special. It manages to entertain but never tries to do anything interesting with what it has. I was not expecting “Wow!” but rather just more than ticking off boxes.
John Travolta is excellent as the local sheriff who discovers he has cancer which really amounts to nothing in the story. Stephen Dorff is very good as the mafia hitman sent to clean the mess up who has a bit of a guiding moral compass. He doesn’t kill innocent people and if you don’t see how he how he gets around that with Parkinson’s guy I can’t help you there. Like many twists here that is telegraphed more blatantly than the famous sign welcoming visitors to Las Vegas.
And that’s part of the problem. Some of the stuff you see coming a mile away. And in a movie like this the ending is practically predetermined. The trick being is how do you make it entertaining and maybe even feel special? That can be fairly tough and while the journey is entertaining they don’t make the ending feel too special.
If I had any really strong complaints it’s the use of shaky handheld cameras. It’s certainly an artistic choice and one that can be effective when used appropriately but when the cameras get too shaky it looks like everybody is experiencing an earthquake and that happens all too often here. There is something to be said for a steady image that nicely shows everything.
I did enjoy Mob Land. It’s not a revelation, but it is an entertaining movie. John Travolta hasn’t had the best career as of late but this one is more hit than miss. If you find yourself with an opportunity to view it, you could do far worse. It just may not be worth looking for on a whim.
Warren Watched A Movie 