I have a soft spot of Vince Vaughn because of his comedy roles back in the 90's and early 2000's. I don't feel as though he has ever had the clout or ability for that matter, to carry a lead role and can't really think of too many films where he was able to pull this off. There are exceptions of course, but often this was because of his co-star or co-stars as much as it was about him.
For the most part he is a good guy to have on the cast, but not the one you want first on the list. There is a reason for this and I think that this film is a good example of why studios don't really bank on his star-power to pull a film over the top.
This film begins with Nick (Vince) being portrayed as a charismatic gangster of sorts that is well-known to be a law-breaking person, but because of his connections and all the charity that he does alongside his criminal activities, he never faces justice. He is well-liked despite being a known killer.
This is the first problem because Vince, to me, just doesn't have that sort of feared gangster persona to him. Let's run with it anyway though.
Nick is friends with a contract killer named "Mike" (James Marsden) but is unaware/maybe aware that Mike is having an affair with his smokin' hot wife "Alice" (Eiza González). One night at a fundraiser that is organized by the real boss of the city's thugs, Nick invited Mike out to the parking lot to have a chat about a "thing" he has going on that he needs Mike's help with. Mike is under Nick in the pecking order so he goes with him even though Mike believes at the time that he is going to get killed for the affair he is having.
Instead, Nick asks Mike to some help with an actual special project that involves Mike re-activating his old skills as an assassin and they drive off to make this happen. We are not given much information as to what is going to happen here, when Mike gets dropped off at a house with a bottle of chloroform and a rag to kidnap whoever opens the door, and I guess it is supposed to be funny when the person who opens the door is Nick himself, Although it is another Nick and Nick is two of the same person existing in the same time and space.
This is where the film makes an attempt at being a time-travel movie and it is somewhat interesting if you are into science-fiction the way that I am, but honestly, the story becomes rather convoluted and complicated from that point forward to the point where I think that most people just kind of tune out to the main story and just decide to roll with it and wait for the next series of fast-talkin' comedy speeches that Vince Vaughn is so well known for in basically all of the films he has ever been in.
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at nearly 60, Vince is lookin good
There's some action which is actually really well done considering that Vaughn is in his late 50's and can't be the easiest person to get a body double for, and also because of the fact that in many of the scenes, Vince is playing two different characters that are in the same scene. I am sure this was a bit of a direction nightmare, and I can appreciate this.
However, this method has been used in a lot of films, and at least to me, it rarely works in dazzling the audience and for me, I kept trying to figure out where it was that they clearly had a body double for Vince in most of what was going on.
The whole story is eventually revealed to have a reason behind it that you might not be suspecting, and because I don't want to ruin this honestly, not-so-amazing plot twist, I will leave it out of this writeup. But I will say that when you do find out about it, you don't really care. The entire situation is a happenstance sort of thing that isn't really a plot so much as it is a bunch of things that just fell together in order to make a story. If you take too much time to think about what these 4 are trying to accomplish, there were many other ways in which they could have gone about it that would have been more effective than the ways they choose.
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probably trying to figure out how to transform into a turkey in order to catch Rick
A lot of the side characters are ok, i guess as they are parodies of what we would all consider to be actual bad guys in life and for me at least, I cannot take actor Keith David seriously ever since he did the voice of the President of the United States in Rick and Morty. I hope he got a lot of money for that because for a lot of people I can't view him as anything other than that.
This sort of movie has it's place I would imagine, but I don't think that 20th Century had much faith in it either seeing as how it was never even given a theatrical run and just went straight to streaming on Hulu. That is today's version of a film that went straight to DVD because the people who made it realized they would just lose a ton of money by bothering to advertise it. This is the reason why I would imagine that most people, much like myself, had never even heard of this movie until it popped up as an option on streaming.
Should I watch it ?
That trailer gives away entirely too much of the plot and the reason for that is because the film was probably too difficult to market otherwise. The main things that are good about this movie is that Vince and James have pretty good on-screen chemistry and their fast-talking comedy hits pretty well in a lot of places. The convoluted and often confusing story is an afterthought here though and that is not surprising considering we have ourselves a time-traveling movie where the main character breaks the main rule of time-travel that was established in meeting their own self. This was established by the BEST time-travel movie ever made, Back to the Future and it's just personal, but I don't like when people don't follow that script and that important rule.
Anyway, before I make this too long just know that this film is perfectly find because of certain key moments and therefore I would qualify it as something that you put on while you clean your house around the TV. It isn't a date-night movie or something that you watch intently for the super-compelling storyline or outstanding acting, because it has neither of those.
As implied in the body of the text, this is only legally streamed on Hulu at the moment but will likely migrate to other services in a month or so. It is very unlikely to ever be on Netflix