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THE BIRTHDAY CAKE
Director: Jimmy Giannopoulos Cast: Shiloh Fernandez, William Fichtner, Val Kilmer, Lorraine Bracco, Ewan McGregor, Emory Cohen, Vincent Pastore, Ashley Benson, Penn Badgley, Aldis Hodge, Jeremy Allen White, Luis Guzman, John Magaro, Jake Weary, David Mazouz, Paul Sorvino MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:23 Release Date: 6/18/21 (limited; digital & on-demand) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 17, 2021 All of the family business, involving drugs and violence, happens around Gio (Shiloh Fernandez), a young man who seems to know less about the reality of his family's business than even strangers in the neighborhood. In The Birthday Cake, the character is nothing more than a pawn, a secret-keeper, and a delivery guy, and his package is about as boring as they come: a cake. The screenplay for director Jimmy Giannopoulos' movie (written by the director, the star, and Diomedes Raul Bermudez) is structured around the mundane. Gio, whose father died "mysteriously" (strangled and found in a car trunk) ten years prior, walks and rides in a taxi and walks some more toward his destination: an annual party commemorating the death of his father, held by the son's maternal uncle, who's also the local crime boss. The cake was baked by Gio's mother (played by Lorraine Bracco), and the way Giannopoulos' camera will randomly linger on the dessert tells us everything we should suspect about the package. We know the movie's final, twisted gag before it arrives, and that appears to be the point. The filmmaker seems to be testing how much suspense he can achieve from detailing a task so fundamentally dull. The surprise here is that there is some suspense. Gio encounters random people in the neighborhood, all of them hinting at his uncle's true character, why Gio shouldn't trust him, and his father's death. Another subplot involves Gio's cousin Leo (Emory Cohen), who shows up in a prologue and exists in absentia for almost the entirety of the movie. The cousin is evading federal agents, who want him to turn on the family, and the family, who suspect this is the case. Gio has to maneuver around looking for Leo, while constantly running into extended family members who are hunting for him. Giannopoulos gets about as much as he can from such simple, shallow material, thanks to the underlying sense of impending dread and other familiar faces (Ewan McGregor as a kindly priest, William Fichtner as a crooked cop, and Val Kilmer as the boss, in addition to many other cameos from the likes of Vincent Pastore and Paul Sorvino). Foundationally, though, The Birthday Cake feels like an experiment in building up—or, less charitably, delaying—the inevitable. There's only so much, most of it wheel-spinning, to be done with that. Copyright © 2021 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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(for pervasive language, violence, some sexual references, nudity and
drug use)
