Some films seem perfect on paper. They have interesting directors, cool premises, and intriguing ensembles featuring actors that you’ve never before seen in the same frame. Everything about them just seems fascinating and worth your time, but when you actually get to them, you end up sorely disappointed. Somehow, the filmmakers involved manage to fumble what appears to be a cinematic slam-dunk, and viewers are left thinking: “How could you possibly have messed that up?” The subject of this review is an example of such Hollywood misfires – the seemingly perfect on-paper Reptile is poorly paced, pointlessly convoluted, and shabbily constructed. It is a waste of the talents of everyone involved.
Let’s look at what went into this film: a leading role for Benicio Del Toro in a crime thriller featuring Justin Timberlake, Alicia Silverstone, and Eric Bogosian. The director and co-writer, Grant Singer, is a music video director making his first foray into feature films, which is exciting because filmmakers of that lineage have produced some tremendous work in the past (look no further than one of the biggest influences on this film: David Fincher himself). Even more promising is Benicio Del Toro is listed as a co-screenwriter alongside Singer and Benjamin Brewer – would the renowned character actor reveal his talents as a gifted screenwriter?
Well, if Reptile is any indication of said talents, the man should stick to performing lines penned by other writers. The plot of this film, which zigs and zags with neither rhyme nor reason, centers around good cop Tom Nichols (Del Toro). Nichols has been charged with investigating the murder of Summer Elswick (Matilda Lutz), a realtor found stabbed to death in her home. The suspects include Summer’s boyfriend Will (Timberlake), her ex-husband Sam, and a shady bystander (played by Michael Pitt) who appears a little too interested in the case’s particulars. As Nichols follows the trail of money and deceit underlying this seemingly simple case, he uncovers more than he bargained for.
Now, that investigative trajectory is par for the course when you have a crime thriller like Reptile. Betrayal, corruption, and unfolding conspiracies are what you expect to see when you hit play – the real joy of watching a film like this lies in how it delivers its reveals. Tension is everything, but that’s precisely what this movie lacks. Reptile feels a bit like a dead snake – lifelessly slack and utterly safe. There is nothing in this film that inspires the same level of dread and anxiety as the likes of Zodiac, Memories of Murder, or Prisoners. Singer has no cinematic technique – his compositions are rote, and his execution of the few setpieces is riddled with lackluster cutting.
That results in sequences that feel devoid of any stakes or even real danger for the characters – it’s all gunshots until the last man is left standing. Spatial inconsistencies abound – a character is shot on the stairs leading to an upper floor during a climactic action scene. Downstairs, nobody bats an eye when a gunshot rings through the house. Little oddities like this, obviously borne of poor planning and inexperienced shooting, rob Reptile of any formal pleasures (which are vital to any film’s success in this genre). That’s a pity since the cinematography here (by Mike Gioulakis) is quite accomplished – it’s only when the filmmakers are tasked with exciting the audience that they fail to meet expectations.
The poor cutting is most probably the result of insufficient coverage – editor Kevin Hickman appears not to have been given many choices. But let’s put those problems aside for a moment to focus on the real issue with Reptile: its terrible script. The screenplay works on a surface level, but the more you think about what happened in the film, the more confused you’ll be. Multiple plot threads are left dangling, most notably a confrontation between two characters that is never referenced after it is left unresolved (even though it contains a major reveal), and the script barely addresses Tom’s past. Instead, it does see fit to resolve a bizarre subplot involving – wait for it – a faucet Tom spots in a suspect’s kitchen.
Characters that obviously had more expanded roles in other versions of the film or the script, such as Tom’s wife (Alicia Silverstone) and his partner (Ato Essandoh), practically disappear after certain points in the movie. The climax is a ridiculously clean ending that undoes all of the complexity that the filmmakers clearly had in mind. It’s unclear what happened in this film’s production process, but it was clearly a mess. That’s because too much of it feels out of place. It’s entirely possible that Del Toro is credited as a screenwriter for making changes to the script while on-set (similar to Ben Affleck on the set of Batman v. Superman). That would, at least, explain why everything here feels so haphazard. It’s not as bad as 2017’s The Snowman, but it is quite bad.
In the end, Reptile falls into the sad group of Netflix originals that feel designed to appeal to the broadest audience possible. There’s no bite to it, and that’s a shame. The performances here are committed, with the actors wringing the material for all its worth. Too bad it all feels so carelessly constructed, put together in the most boring way possible. That’s no way to tell a story like this, which might have had more impact if the filmmakers had been able to deliver the tension of a good thriller. What’s here is a droll bore.
