Mark Reviews Movies: ARIZONA (2018)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 23, 2018

A neo-noir thriller set in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, Arizona is also a tale of two performances. Each one represents one of the dueling aims of Jonathan Watson's movie, which wants to be a serious thriller and a demented comedy. There are times when it works as either one, but it never achieves a good balance between the two.

The first performance is from Rosemarie DeWitt, playing a real estate agent named Cassie, who moved to a gated neighborhood in the Arizona desert just before the housing market crash. Her situation becomes worse when the movie's second key player enters the story. That character is named Sonny, and he's played by Danny McBride. Sonny "accidentally" kills Cassie's boss during an argument, leading the killer to abduct Cassie, in the hopes of keeping her quiet while he figures out how to clean up the mess he has made.

The plot within Luke Del Tredici's screenplay is a series of escalations, as Sonny's bad plan leads to more abductions and more murders. DeWitt plays her role as we'd expect within a straightforward thriller, using her wits to free herself and, later, rescue her teenage daughter (played by Lolli Sorenson). It's a fine performance—part desperation, part ingenuity, and completely believable, even as the complications mount.

The same can't be said of McBride's turn. Whatever statement the movie might be trying to make—about how an ordinary man could turn violent when faced with financial hardship—is wholly undermined by McBride's insistence on capitalizing the wackiness of his character. There's never a sense that Sonny is ordinary in any way. McBride plays him as a weirdo from the start, and his performance just becomes stranger as the body count increases. Sonny comes across more as a boring guy, talking about home renovations, who occasionally transforms into a psychopath.

The cat-and-mouse element works well against the mostly abandoned neighborhood. There are some amusing turns from comic actors like Kaitlin Olson (as Sonny's ex) and David Alan Grier (as an ineptly gung-ho Sheriff), as well as a clever twist on expectations within Luke Wilson's performance as Cassie's ex-husband. Pieces of Arizona work quite well, but the main thrust of the enterprise seems to take its cues from McBride. The movie is uncertain of its intent, sporadically demented, and ultimately destructive to an extreme.

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