Everybody
knows somebody like Sonny. No matter what happens, its never his fault. Sure,
he signed an adjustable rate mortgage, but nobody told him the rate might
actually go up. Yes, he also killed his realtor, but he was provoked. He then takes
his put-upon employee Cassie Fowler hostage, because she made him nervous
talking about cops and ambulances. Sonny
never takes responsibility, but nobody gets off easy in Jonathan Watson’s Arizona, which screens during this
year’s Sundance Film Festival.
The
recently divorced Fowler is in roughly the same boat as the man who abducts
her. She bought her home from her future boss, only to soon find herself
underwater when the market turned. Now, she is struggling to unload similar
houses on not-so-unsuspecting buyers, in hopes of making a commission to apply
to her deeply-in-arrears mortgage. Sometimes the erratic Sonny will see her as
a fellow victim and sometimes as a sub-prime predator, but he has a nasty habit
of killing people in front of her, like his callous ex-wife. Of course, it is
never his fault, mind you.
The
stakes start to rise when Sonny sets out to abduct Fowler’s daughter for more
leverage. Since the gated communities cratered, people moved away, so there was
no much pressure on the one-cop police force to expand. Eventually, the
resourceful Fowler slips loose, but there is really no place for her to go. At
some point, accounts will just have to be settled.
The
screenplay by TV writer-producer Luke Del Tredici desperately wants to be
topical, but it works better when it settles down and focuses on genre
business. If anything, the utterly irresponsible behavior it chronicles
undermines its sub-prime messaging.
However,
the cast still manages to do wonders with the inconsistent material. Rosemarie
DeWitt is highly charismatic on screen, which helps make Fowler an appealingly proactive
character. Danny Masterson plays Sonny like a Man-Boy from Hell, basically falling
back on his established shtick, but casting it in a darker, more sinister hue. David
Alan Grier isn’t around for long, but it is hard to forget his appearance as Coburn,
the Keystone-esque cop.
Watson
fully capitalizes on the loneliness of the Arizona desert (technically shot in
New Mexico, but close enough) and the sinister possibilities of the winding
lanes and dead-end cul-de-sacs lined with empty foreclosed houses. Its like
Detroit in the desert. In truth, it is a tense, competently executed thriller,
but it does not belong in the Midnight section (not enough blood or attitude). Earning
a moderate recommendation for thriller fans, Arizona screens again tonight (1/27) in Park City, as part of the
2018 Sundance Film Festival.