Viking Night: Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead
By Bruce Hall
September 23, 2015
BoxOfficeProphets.com
But the best part about it is that sometimes, they make a movie in some place other than New York, Chicago or Los Angeles. I don’t know about you, but I get sick of the way Hollywood tends to ignore the rest of the country, as if the whole thing is just a vast suburb of those three cities. Sure, they film a lot in Vancouver - when they need a cheap stand in for New York, Chicago or Los Angeles.
Well guess what? People occasionally fall in love with Gabrielle Anwar or get brutally murdered by Steve Buscemi in Denver, too, and it's about damn time someone acknowledged that. But you shouldn't watch Things to do in Denver When You're Dead just because I'm telling you to. You should also watch it because it's a pretty decent movie starring a lot of actors I really love. As for Denver itself, it's really terrible and you totally shouldn't move here. You'll hate it.
Tell your friends.
Moving on, Andy Garcia is more than the obvious love child of Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro. He's also a pretty good actor, and the glue that holds this whole thing together. As retired mobster Jimmy the Saint, he seems a little out of place running a video message service called Afterlife Advice. It allows the terminally ill (or perhaps suicidal) people to tape messages to their loved ones, or perhaps an expecting parent to record words of wisdom for their children to view at a later time. It’s not a bad idea, and Jimmy’s natural used car salesman charm fits the role well, as he’s able to present a potentially macabre idea as the most natural thing in the world.
But the business is failing, probably because it’s so potentially macabre. And this is when Jimmy is summoned by his old boss, known only as The Man with the Plan (Christopher Walken). The Man requires a favor, and it concerns his batshit crazy son, Bernard (Michael Nicolosi). Bernard is still pining for his ex-girlfriend Meg (Sarah Trigger), who has taken up with a new man in California, and his mental state continues to deteriorate in her absence. It comes to light that the Boyfriend (Josh Charles) is heading to Denver for a visit. The Man needs Jimmy to intercept the Boyfriend and put the fear of God into him, chasing him off and clearing the way for Bernard to swoop in and win her back.
It’s a simple plan - so simple that Jimmy decides he needs four more guys to pull it off. So, instead of just driving out to the Kansas border with an aluminum bat and waiting for the Boyfriend to show, Jimmy puts the band back together, and recruits his old team out of retirement. Big Bear (William Forsythe), Easy Wind (Bill Nunn), Pieces Olden (Christopher Lloyd), and Critical Bill (Treat Williams) join Jimmy’s road trip, successfully completing Phase One of the plan by locating the Boyfriend. Unfortunately, the Boyfriend is a little smarter than he looks, and the plan goes off the rails in a big way. I won’t spoil the details except to say that Critical Bill is crazier than a wet bag full of rabid cats - and in accordance with Pesci’s Law, you should never, EVER let the Crazy Guy be part of the team.
Now, the “crazy guy ruins everything” trope has been a staple of crime movies since the beginning of time, so I suppose it’s a valid criticism to peg this as lazy writing. It depends, as I say often, on your level of tolerance. Like most genres of film, there are certain tropes and tricks of the trade we’ve all come to expect, and if used properly they serve as a springboard to the real point of the story. That’s pretty much the case here, and it’s when The Man becomes aware of the botched operation that the real story begins, as he more or less issues a fatwa against Jimmy and his crew: Get the hell out of Denver and never come back, or prepare to meet your maker.
To emphasize the point, The Man dispatches Mr. Shh (Steve Buscemi), a visually unassuming but ruthlessly violent hit man whose methods and demeanor are such that I really need to see a buddy comedy crossover with him and the Kung Fu Priest from Dead Alive.
Like I said before, the botched job serves as the setup for the real theme of the film, which is regret. It falls to each member of Jimmy’s entourage to decide whether they will stay in Denver and face the consequences of their life choices, or run away. Each makes his own choice for his own reasons, but Jimmy in particular clearly regrets never fully turning his life around. Falling in love, having a family and being a good father seem to be important to him, and he begins to explore these things with a disarming girl he meets at a bar (Gabrielle Anwar) and a wayward prostitute named Lucinda (Fairuza Balk).
Like many a crime story protagonist, Jimmy seems like the one guy in the film who might have made something of himself, if only he’d turned left instead of right, and that serves as the emotional center of the movie. In fact, the film is periodically broken up by clips from his Afterlife Advice clients, as they opine on issues that happen to be pertinent to the developing story. It’s somewhat effective, and I’d even go so far as to call it poignant if the film in general weren’t so full of winking self-awareness. Things to do in Denver knows it’s a mob movie, it knows that it’s following a formula, and most of the characters seem like they’re in on it.
That’s not a bad thing, but it leads to an uncomfortably uneven tone at times. It’s not quite enough to take you out of the story, but it’s sufficient to alter the experience, like an old car that only rattles when it’s in motion, making it impossible to pinpoint the problem. Behind the camera, Gary Fleder (Kiss the Girls, Homefront) does a workmanlike job of letting the film more or less direct itself. With a strong cast and an uncomplicated story, the story more or less runs entirely on cruise control. Scott Rosenberg (Con Air, High Fidelity) turns in a decent, paint-by-numbers script that’s a little too in love with its own dialogue. The characters in this story speak in stylized colloquialisms that require a fair amount of explanation, and are occasionally overused to the point of distraction.
But I suppose these are slightly petty concerns. This is a decent movie with a delightful cast (Don Cheadle and Tiny Lister appear small roles) of professionals who manage to elevate the production from a C minus to a solid B. Maybe I’m being a bit of a homer, since I happen to dearly love most of the actors in this movie, and I’m kind of partial to crime stories - so much so that I am willing to excuse the fact that the plot contains as many intimately familiar landmarks as the setting. Despite the fact that this is probably a somewhat mediocre film, it’s always been a pleasant experience for me, and I never regret watching it when I do. It fits me like an old pair of gloves. And although there really is no significant mob activity in Denver, if there were, I’d be okay with it as long as Christopher Walken was the man with the plan.