A Crooked Somebody
‘A Crooked Somebody,’ a film by Trevor White, is an unusually effective drama. It is also a rather odd tale about a man who has lived his life as a fraud and the wrong choices he makes now and in the past that cause his destruction. This character study reminded me of Hal Hartley (one of my favorite writer/directors from the ‘90s) in its ability to create such deeply flawed protagonists where you spend most of your time wondering whether or not you want them to talk their way out of another mess.
And it’s packed with really great character actors, most of whom have done fantastic work on TV all know how to keep this kind of movie moving smoothly between beats. I wouldn’t call it groundbreaking and I wish it embraced more indie roughness like a Hartley film tends to before getting too polished in the last act. But hey, it’s always nice when an under-the-radar movie surprises you like this one did for me.
Rich Sommer is good at playing fast talkers after eight years as Harry Crane on “Mad Men.” Here he plays, well, a crooked somebody Michael Vaughn (the title also riffs on something his father, played by Ed Harris, says: “Better to be an honest nobody than a crooked somebody”). Michael Vaughn is pretty damn crooked.
He’s a traveling psychic one of those guys who goes town to town doing ceremonies where he claims he can speak with dead loved ones of people in the audience; when things aren’t going well, Partner (Joanne Froggatt) pretends to be desperate for communication mostly just to impress others there. One person impressed is Nathan (Clifton Collins Jr.), who kidnaps Michael later that night forcing him at gunpoint to help him communicate with someone on the other side someone Nathan killed.
To say anything more than that would take away from what happens next in ‘A Crooked Somebody,’ but I will say this: Michael makes a series of increasingly bad decisions about his kidnapper. “A Crooked Somebody” is one of those movies where you watch a guy build a house of cards, and all the while you know it’s going to fall over.
Nathan is a fragile guy, but he’s also dangerous and Michael has spent his life taking advantage of people like him. The narrative also ropes in a few other familiar faces, such as Amanda Crew from “Silicon Valley,” Michael Mosley from “Seven Seconds,” Paul Ben Victor from about a thousand things and Ed Harris’ real-life wife Amy Madigan as Michael’s mother. It’s just a really solid cast that brings its A-game across the board, although particularly Sommer and Collins who sometimes feel like they have completely opposite acting styles (Sommer is great at buttoned-up anxiety; Collins has always struck me as a very instinctual in-the-moment actor). They’re perfectly cast here.
The cast is good, but there are some bad production choices that hold back White’s movie as it barrels toward a climax. There’s a wrongheaded over-use of score in the final act, something that always happens in movies trying to ratchet up tension, but it just distracts here.
Also, some undercooked threads of relationship between Michael and his father, who is religious; and the disingenuousness with which Michael views what he does as not dissimilar from what his father does the film teaches him it’s very different, but I would have liked to see Harris & Madigan used more; same with Mosley & Ben-Victor, two actors I’m always excited to see pop up and then given nothing to do.
In the end, “A Crooked Somebody” is about a man who has spent his life predicting how people will respond to what he says. It could be a broad ask or an emotionally charged comment that he knows will elicit the right response and make them believe. There’s a great scene where Michael slips so effortlessly into his shtick in a motel lobby with the proprietor of the establishment that it’s almost magic.
But he learns the hard way: People are unpredictable. The grieving can resent; the violent can want change; the loyal can betray you. We watch Michael tumble from one mistake to another because his ego blinds him to others’ needs. And then White and writer Andrew Zilch stick the landing so hard dropping credits after that rarest thing these days: an absolutely perfect final line.
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