The police think I did it.
You didn’t?
In this indie thriller, Lola Kirke plays the harried assistant to Heather, an celebrity of indeterminate talent, played by Zoe Kravitz; when her boss is murdered, Kirke’s Jill finds herself the main suspect and she sets out to discover which of Heather’s many enemies is actually responsible. I really wanted to like this movie substantially more than I did. Kirke is good as always; I’ve been a big fan ever since Mistress America where she actually managed to land a good performance without being overshadowed by Greta Gerwig, no mean feat. And Katz has an interesting eye for lights and colors; this is definitely what you’d call a neon noir and there are some striking images to the film. And John Cho, as the detective investigating Heather’s death, is a welcome addition, as he always is, but he’s only in about ten minutes of the movie and feels pretty wasted. Worth noting that one of the scenes he’s in is easily one of the best in the movie, a tense conversation between Cho and Kirke in a diner. But Kravitz isn’t very good and Heather is a pretty bad character and the movie never seems quite sure just how big of a celebrity she is. At one point, there’s talk of her headlining a movie; later she’s followed by exactly one paparazzi, so how famous is she actually? And an actor named Reeve Carney plays a character with relatively little screen time, but he’s really pivotal and he’s just awful; the movie spends a lot of time building him up as a dangerous psycho, but when he shows up, he’s just a whiny poser and the tension kind of drains out of the movie. The less said about the ultimate solution to the mystery the better. It’s really stupid, that’s all I’ll say. I’d like to see Katz direct something he didn’t write; he has an eye, but the screenplay is pretty terrible. On the whole, Kirke is really the only reason to see this movie and she’s just not enough all on her own. 2 stars.
tl;dr – occasionally stylish neo-noir suffers from mostly weak performances and a bad script; Lola Kirke’s good lead performance can’t save the movie on its own. 2 stars.