Filmmaker Dito Montiel has always worked on the outskirts of Hollywood yet has still found a way to pull together impressive casts for his humanistic stories, often about those living on the fringes of criminal enterprises. That began with his debut feature A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, starring an up-and-coming actor named Channing Tatum.
And while Montiel didn’t technically discover Tatum, he did cast him in dramatic roles at a time when most casting directors only saw him as a dancer and pretty boy. His latest work, Riff Raff (from a screenplay by John Pollono, Stronger, Small Engine Repair), tells the story of an extended family, some of whom aren’t blood relations but all of whom need each other to survive an impending storm in the form of a pair of eccentric gunmen, bent on revenge.
Ed Harris plays the family patriarch, Vincent, who left his criminal life behind when he married his second wife Sandy (Gabrielle Union), who has a son of her own, DJ (Miles J. Harvey) from her previous marriage. DJ is young but incredibly intelligent, longing to be a tougher person like Vincent, whom he admires tremendously. While spending time in their vacation home in the woods of New Jersey just before New Year’s Eve, Vincent gets an unexpected visit from his grown son Rocco (Lewis Pullman), his very pregnant girlfriend Marina (Emanuela Postacchini), and his mother/Vincent's first wife, Ruth (Jennifer Coolidge), a full-time train wreck even when she’s fully sober, which she rarely is.
Eventually, we find out that Rocco is on the run from a gangster named Leftie (Bill Murray), whom Vincent once worked with when they were younger men. Vincent is accompanied by the sociopathic but weirdly polite sidekick Lonnie (Pete Davidson), and the two want to get revenge for something Rocco did to Leftie’s son, Johnny (Michael Angelo Covino). But once everyone is together and the time for settling the score has begun, Leftie has second thoughts about how he wants the night to play out in terms of spilling secrets and blood.
As clunky as Riff Raff can be at times, when it simply allows the characters to spend time together in different combinations, character development actually occurs and the film gets far more interesting and engaging. Leftie and Lonnie are a tremendous team, both funny and slightly scary because their banter keeps us off guard for just how dangerous they can be. In addition, the scenes between the two stepbrothers, DJ and Rocco, are revealing because they were both raised by the same man, but at two very different times in his life, with Rocco having Vincent abandon him at a fairly young age. Despite the story being about converging plot lines that, in theory, chaotically slam into each other, things never really get that messy, and the film frequently feels slow and meandering.
Harris has turned playing this type of cranky old guy character into an art form (he plays one in another movie opening this week, My Dead Friend Zoe, and he played one last year in Love Lies Bleeding). And while I certainly haven’t grown tired of watching him do this, it doesn’t exactly offer any surprises when it comes to his actions in the film’s climax. I think there’s some vague message about doing everything in your power to protect and avenge your family, but that’s lost in the family drama, which is fine by me. Riff Raff is a mixed bag, but the actors play well together for the most part, and I was fine sticking around to see where everybody landed.
The film opens theatrically on Friday.
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