**½/****
starring Barry Pepper, Vin Diesel, Seth Green, Andrew Davoli
written and directed by Brian Koppelman & David Levien
by Walter Chaw Counting on one’s desire to see a legendarily hammy actor–a pair of them in fact–unleashed without fetters onto the unsuspecting world with nary a warning, Knockaround Guys is a surprisingly likeable kitsch artifact that astounds for its casual pretension and dangerous level of cheese. The film has John Malkovich trying unsuccessfully to channel his Valmont through a Brooklyn-made Guido and Dennis Hopper still out of control in a role intended, I think, to be bookish. Gathering dust on the shelf for a year or so now, the picture is finding a release in the early-fall doldrums one presumes for the meteoric rise of Vin Diesel, but stealing the show, as he so often does, is veteran character actor Tom Noonan as a laconic, nowhere Montana sheriff.
The delight of the piece, however, is how good it feels in between its deadly narrative passages (and make no mistake that a lot of this film is just awful) and how much fun it can be to see actors without shame proceed to be shameless. As a 12-year-old in a difficult-to-watch opening sequence, Matty (Barry Pepper), the son of infamous mob under-boss Benny “Chains” (Hopper), demonstrates that he’s too soft for “the life.” Years of disappointment and failure later, Matty hopes for a chance to prove himself to both dad Benny and oily uncle Teddy (Malkovich); the chance comes in the form of an out-of-state cash pick-up undertaken by Matty’s ex-druggie pal Marbles (Seth Green), which, predictably, goes awry somewhere in the middle of Montana. Along for the ride are lothario Scarpa (Andrew Davoli) and monologue-happy enforcer Taylor (Diesel), all taking on the hick sheriff (Noonan) in what amounts to a minor reversal of John Irvin’s schlock-classic Next of Kin.
With Oedipal complexities handled with the same amount of care as a showdown in a rusted-out meat rendering factory, Knockaround Guys–brought to us by the same screenwriting team (making their joint directorial debut) responsible for the similarly interesting and similarly artificial Rounders–tends to hamstring itself with overlong dialogue sequences. The look and pace of the piece–provided by Keith Gordon’s regular cinematographer Tom Richmond, production designer Lester Cohen (Forces of Nature), and editor David Moritz, a two-time Wes Anderson collaborator–throb with a lonesome forced realism, muted and dusty.
Knockaround Guys demonstrates what it could be when Noonan struts on-screen with his careful reptilian gait and a picture that betrays what it might have been (while entertaining in a high-fromage sort of way) when Hopper and Malkovich do their peculiar things. The real failures of the film are, in other words, its uncontrolled glee with its veteran cast; too much faith in its freshman players (Diesel, a fine physical presence, can’t deliver a line and almost single-handedly sinks the film during one barroom oration); and not enough time spent in the company of Noonan.
