The first big surprise of the dawning summer season is Next Day Air, a double-crossing crooks comedy owing much to films like Snatch, Go and Lucky Number Slevin. Unlike all three of those films, Next Day Air almost never plays it completely straight, opting for a nearly full-on comedy. The results are surprisingly hilarious.
A cocaine package is delivered to the wrong address, leading numerous rival factions to war over it. Two bumbling thieves, Brody (Mike Epps, Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins) and Guch (Wood Harris, playing a comic variant on his Avon Barksdale role from The Wire), make up one such faction. In an interview with The Diamondback, Epps talked about his role in the film.
“My interest in the movie was that it was a different role from all the comedy roles that I had played in the past,” Epps said. When asked if he killed someone in the film, Epps added, “I’ma try.”
“This time the movie’s kind of dark, you know what I mean – cocaine, shoot ’em up, bang-bang movie,” Epps said.
Even though the film relies on dark humor (sometimes very dark – a reminder to a victim that the torture wasn’t over yet drew huge laughs at the press screening), Next Day Air plays light. The film exists in an amoral universe, one more concerned with editing tricks and funny dialogue than any sort of morality. In that setting, the film works.
While the dialogue isn’t up to the caliber of something like Snatch, Next Day Air does score laughs in every scene. It would be tough to make the same claim for many, if not most, mainstream studio comedies. For example, not knowing who sent the package of cocaine to their address, Brody and Guch celebrate, with Brody reasoning, “God sent that.”
But it’s not just the dialogue drawing laughs in newcomer Blair Cobbs’ very funny script. At one point, Brody and Shavoo (Omari Hardwick, Miracle at St. Anna) speak in code about cocaine over the phone under the guise of talking about sexy women, and the film conveniently provides subtitles. Not only are the subtitles funny, but Shavoo’s girl is gradually waking up next to him during the entire conversation.
There are other little touches that score chuckles, like the ridiculous name of bad guy Bodega Diablo (Emilio Rivera, Sons of Anarchy). There’s also a man sleeping on Brody and Guch’s couch with a machine gun throughout the film (Malik Barnhardt, Belly 2: Millionaire Boyz Club), despite neither of them knowing who he is. At one point, drug-dealer Shavoo is shocked when the guy on the couch gets up. Bewildered, Shavoo says, “I thought this motherf—er was dead.”
Another plus is the pacing, kept at a fever-pitch for the most part, making the slim 90-minute runtime fly by. Also helping the velocity of the film is David Checel’s (Stomp the Yard) stylized editing, a must on a fluffy romp like Next Day Air. Adding a gun-cocking sound effect to a pointed finger, cutting on song beats, putting in freeze frames and slow-motion, Checel’s hand in the editing room keeps the film skipping along.
And while the direction of the film’s ending is not a surprise, Cobbs does manage to wring a few unexpected touches out of it. Those moments toward the end of the film are unanticipated but inevitable, a hallmark of good writing. In general, Air tells a familiar story, but with such funny and fast-paced execution it elevates above its common plot.
Filling up the numerous plotlines of the story required a large ensemble cast, and Next Day Air acquits itself well, though no one character is revelatory. This may have more to do with the fairly generic character types than the performers.
Cisco Reyes (Leverage) as gang henchman Jesus is notable in the cast for the sympathy he manages to engender in an unlikeable role. Alternating between self-doubt and obvious braggadocio, Reyes is funny at both speeds. Mos Def (Cadillac Records) also makes the most of a smaller role as Donald Faison’s (Scrubs) larcenous coworker; his oddball delivery always good to juice up a line until it’s funnier than it was on the page. In films like 16 Blocks and Be Kind, Rewind, Mos Def has proven himself a reliable comedy force.
Summit Entertainment is only distributing Next Day Air to 1,000 screens, showing a lack of confidence in a film that, at least at the packed press screening, caused laughs loud enough to obscure the dialogue in most scenes. Don’t be fooled, Next Day Air delivers the goods.
dan.benamor@gmail.com
3.5 out of 5 stars
