Year: 2001
Runtime: 93 min
Director: Alex Wright
Starring: Peter Weller, Bryan Brown, Angus MacFadyen, Chantell Stander.
The River Styx is a mythical Greek river that separates the world of the living from the world of the dead. I know this because it is basic Greek history and also because wanna-be neo-noir Styx reminds us of this both in its title and in an awkward scene in which a character verbally explains the title to another character. It is not a subtle scene and its clumsy narrative is endemic of the entire film.
This is just a disappointment.
But it is a disappointment with a lot of promise, especially in the casting department, because it pairs two fun actors in a move reminiscent of a low-budget Heat. I am of course talking about the only two note-worthy names in the entire movie, Peter Weller and Bryan Brown, playing frenemies on one last heist.
The plot isn’t bad on paper, so I can’t blame the pen that crafted the framework of the story. It sees former safe cracker Weller getting forced into this last gig when his brother, played by Angus MacFadyen, comes to him for help paying off a local mobster. Their last spot of work together went poorly–I mean like exploding ambulance poorly, and Weller is reluctant, but family is family, so he agrees, not realizing that this heist is being orchestrated by Brown, whom he had left for dead on that last botched job.
Well, that sounds like an awkward reunion, doesn’t it? Makes the yearly Christmas dinner with your in-laws seem positively inviting, no?
Well Brown doesn’t appear to hold a grudge, though he has shacked up with Weller’s old flame, a seductive young lady played by Chantell Stander. He’s got a plan to steal a bunch of diamonds and he’s already got the crew and heavy equipment to do it. He’s just missing an expert safe man.
Again, on paper this sounds positively watchable. But it’s really not.
The direction from Alex Wright is amateurish throughout, with padded scenes to keep stretching out the runtime and turning what should have been a character-driven heist film into a slog. It feels like every other scene is completely superfluous to the main plot. You want to watch Angus MacFadyen play poker? I sure hope so! What about endlessly droning dialog scenes that have our characters reciting the details of the story to each other, just in case we, the audience, decided to stop paying attention? Oh heck yeah, we’ve got that too!
A movie like this should zero in on the characters, their plight, and the details of the criminal job. Here the focus is definitely on the characters, but each one is presented with one main personality trait and left with no development.
I get that this was supposed to be a sort of noir-ish flick and that those movies tend to follow familiar patterns, but Styx really doesn’t try to break away from the conventions of the genre, with a femme fatale, a big score, men you shouldn’t trust with your life, and tons of cigarettes. Actually, it feels a little weird to point it out, but there is a massive amount of smoking in this movie. I mean, like a near constant stream of cigarettes. Everyone gets in on the tobacco fun, with Weller smoking in nearly every scene. On one hand, it helps to date this film when we see characters wantonly lighting up in a restaurant, but on the other hand it makes me think that the only producer on the movie was Marlboro.
I’ve heard the argument that smoking is a necessary stylistic choice for noir. I disagree. The right attitude is all you need for a movie to be a proper film noir. Styx does not have that attitude. Oh, it thinks it does, but it really doesn’t.
The sense of style is rigidly low-budget 90s in flavor, with looping techno music and unnecessary slow-motion shootouts. See, when John Woo filmed a slow-motion gunfight, he did it with flair and style, like a ballet. Styx just has dudes stand in place shooting at other dudes, only slowly. It has all the thrill of a target range at a carnival.
Even our cast struggles with the material. Brown does the better job out of the leads, but he isn’t doing much heavy acting, just some good old fashioned mugging for the camera. Weller fluctuates from passably human to cardboard-cutout at a moment’s notice, which is a big disappointment since he’s our leading man. But both our leads cannot hold a candle to MacFadyen. Angus is a pretty good actor, but here he seems to have made a bet that he could play the most out-of-sync human being possible. And it’s a bet he intends to win, often mumbling his lines with frantic gusto and nonsensical observations, as though he should be wearing a tinfoil hat and explaining in great detail about fluoride in the water supply. He’s a manic cartoon and though I would never call it good acting, at least watching his wild-eyed performance kept me awake.
The rest of the movie could not claim such a feat.
The plot meanders from one scene of talking heads to the next, with a handful of shootouts before the heist. The actual heist almost seems like an afterthought, with zero attention being paid to how they intend to carry out their plan. In fact, using the word “heist” is really too generous. This thugs just drive a semi through a wall and literally blow up the vault. That’s some real expert safe cracking on display right there.
There are a couple twists reserved for the end, but they think they are more surprising than they really are. This is a movie that does not color outside the lines.
So are there any redeeming factors to Styx? Well if you are a Peter Weller fanatic, you might want to see it just for him, ditto for the one or two Bryan Brown fanboys in the room (hi!), but there’s nothing particularly alluring about this clumsy crime caper.
It sits resolutely just a couple notches below average and will likely be purged from your memory within hours of watching the credits roll.
