Prison
was good for Graham Castillo. When he lazed about all day, they called it “good
behavior.” Now that he’s out, he is not so crazy about getting one of those “job”
dealios. He has a capery plan instead, but we know what that means.
Misadventures ensue in Mike Hermosa’s The
Head Thieves (trailer
here), which
screens as the opening night film of the 2016 Other Venice Film Festival.
Castillo’s
grouchy mother prefers his Filipino brothers Frankie and Duncan, even though
the duo had been adopted, partly because the latter two were never in trouble
with the law and partly because Graham is such a miserable jerk. However,
Frankie and Duncan bizarrely idolize their older bro, so they readily agree to
help cock-eyed scheme. One fateful night behind bars, Castillo overheard two
fellow inmates discussing where they stashed the loot from a bank robbery. Of
course digging it up from the almond orchard in question will require more work
than any of the three idiots is used to.
Head is a generally
amusing collection of gags strung together to approximate a caper narrative,
but it features one of the funniest celebrity cameos since Bob Barker laid a
beating on Adam Sandler in Happy Gilmore.
This time it is Daniel Baldwin (the cool Baldwin Brother), who brings the pain
under his own name, when the elder Castillo man-child disrupts his
book-signing. Hermosa pushes his luck with an uncredited Andy Dick appearance, because
just being the rehab veteran is not funny in and of itself.
However,
Dante Basco (who was so ferocious in Paradise Broken) makes a surprisingly
endearing sad sack as Frankie Castillo (the one with the Mexican internet
girlfriend). He has also some nice bantering chemistry with his real life brother
Dion Basco (as Duncan, the even more naïve one), helping balance out the
abrasiveness of Mickey Gooch Jr.’s Graham Castillo. Gooch clearly has a Will
Ferrell thing going, except he can actually be funny at times.
