Night Always Comes

FULL SPOILER-FREE REVIEW @ https://movieswetextedabout.com/night-always-comes-review-vanessa-kirby-shines-in-a-film-that-fumbles-its-potential/ "Night Always Comes falls short of its ambition. There's a powerful story here - the moral erosion provoked by systems that always fail the same people - but the film never finds the most impactful way to tell it. Atmosphere and performances elevate the material, with Vanessa Kirby in particular carrying the story's weight with a commitment that deserved a sharper script. Yet between redundancy, lack of subtlety, and indecision between bitter satire and taut thriller, the experience slips into frustration and overemphasis. When the night ends, what remains is the sense that all that noise amounted to very little meaning." Rating: C-

Oh deary me, what a mess. First of all, the script and direction is atrocious. Lines are terrible, and in terms of direction, somehow they managed to turn every actor, including the two very talented main actresses, into awkward local amateur theater members. When everyone on set seems uncomfortable and stilted, that's when you know the director sucks. Then, the story. OMG, the story. Our protagonist is the dumbest person on the planet, perhaps only superceded by her mother, except this character is so insanely poorly written, that she is just unreal. You have an appointment to sign loan papers with the current owner of the building you're buying and his lawyer at the loans office. You have an agreement with your mother to meet them there to sign the papers, and she doesn't turn up... Because she just changed her mind randomly, decided to buy a car instead, because hey it's my money and I don't really wanna buy this property anyway, I decided, and also I don't wanna call and let you know. I mean, WTF? What kind of regarded writing is this? Let's fix this for you with a couple of other options that actually make sense, and anyone with a room temperature IQ could come up with in a minute: 1) The mom's an alcoholic or a drug addict and went on a bender. 2) The mom had an accident on the way there and is dead or in the ICU. But then... What about this entire setup in the first place? Sure, loan papers need to be signed, but why this elaborate meet-up? If you need to sign papers, they'll prepare them at the office, and either send them to you, or have you drop by at your discretion to sign them. The seller of the property is completely uninvolved in this process, let alone his flipping lawyer. Why are these people even there? They're not the lender! It's this constant level of regardation that keeps frustrating you. But anyway, let's continue. Now Vanessa needs to raise 25k by nine o'clock and deposit them into the seller's account for some reason. Again, what? Why? The house loan, i.e. that which will be paid in full to the seller, i.e. the actual money that he needs, is already defunct! The loan office had granted a loan to two co-signers, Vanessa and her lala land mom, and now the mom has pulled out of the deal. Loan null and void, reapply and prepare to be rejected, as you're now the only signer for the whole amount. THAT'S the problem that needs solving, and the property seller has NOTHING to do with it. Why on earth would sending him 25 grand make any difference whatsoever. Has NOONE on set ever bought or sold a property? They answer must be no, but also they're too dumb and arrogant to do a simple Google search. I swear these writers are so beyond regarded it's infuriating. Okay, but the script needs it, so okay, she needs 25k, so let's go. Her two jobs won't help, but hey she's also a prostitute, so she gets the idea of asking her very rich banker-type customer for a loan. He's a rich man (an Asian one, so the next-worst type of man according to Hollywood), so he's of course a piece of shit with a wife and kids. He says no. And then they have sex, and he doubles her standard payment of 500 to 1,000 bucks. And Vanessa is very sad and hurt. But hang on, I made the mistake of considering this for a fraction of a second, unlike our braindead protagonist, so I have a question: If he pays you 500 for a lay, why wouldn't you offer him a deal, let's say half off if you pay up front - 25k for a hundred lays. Seems like a good deal, problem solved. But no, we don't have time for this, because miss shit-for-brains has decided to steal this guy's Mercedes AMG sports car. Oh, you think - that'll fetch a pretty penny, now she just has to find someone shady to buy it and she's home free. But no, you misunderstood. She just hates the guy and wants him to suffer, so she drives like crazy, parks the car under a bridge next to a bunch of hoodlums and homeless people and leaves it there with the door open. No, seriously. She's that regarded. Yes. Really. Also, just before she stole the car, I spent another second thinking for her and thought that she would now blackmail the guy for the money. I mean, they set it up so elaborately. They spent such care making sure to show us and hammer it in that this guy has a wife and kids. First he says it outright in an expedition dump, then after sex, he's calling them on the phone from outside the hotel. They couldn't be setting up a blackmail storyline any more elaborately and clumsily. But actually, because this is Hollywood they're so blinded by their deep hatred for men, primarily white and "white adjacent" ones (the language of modern racists truly is so ugly), that they cannot see their own setup. All they wanted to do was show how disgusting this filthy man is (unlike our wonderful, thieving prostitute protagonist). It boggles the mind. 60 IQ max, I swear. So anyway, she walks back to her own car and drives to her prostitute girlfriend who's at her rich politician sugar daddy's apartment. More insanely bad dialogue ensues, but the gist of it is that she'd like to have the three grand back that this friend owes her. You'd be forgiven if you scratch your head a bit at this, as our protagonist has been set up as generally struggling to make ends meet, but hey, it's a minor gripe. A not so minor gripe is that this was an old loan to get the friend out of jail. So, a bond. Sooo... This friend isn't on the lam, so we must assume that the issue is resolved. I.e., the bond would've been paid back. That's how bonds work. And then you remember, "Oh right, these writers are regarded. They probably think a bond is like a payment to get out of jail, like in Monopoly." I mean, it's gotta be that. AI would've gotten this right. Actually, that's how you know AI didn't write this script - it's simply too dumb. So finally, her friend pays her back 500 of the 3,000 she owes her by stealing them from her boyfriend's safe that's literally spilling out wads of cash. Ehm, why aren't you paying back all of it? Oh, so our thieving prostitute protagonist has a "reason" to steal all the cash from the safe. Another brain dead caper that involves her getting help from her ex-con friend from work (he's black, therefore he's a good guy, unlike each and every other whitey (adjacent) man who's a huge POS in this fine work of art). Vanessa's five brain cells fail to understand that drilling through the safe to open it means that you can't just put it back like nothing happened. I'm at the midway point now, and our wonderful prostitute and her convict friend have no decided to go get the Mercedes AMG and sell it. The one she left under a bridge with the door open next to a bunch of hoodlums like seven hours earlier. Because that'll still be there. It's not like there's a literal zero percent chance that it hasn't been stolen. And even if we assumed it wasn't stolen, it would 100% have been towed, as she left it in the middle of the road, blocking it. I can't anymore. It's such 2025 Hollywood brain dead misandrist racist boring garbage, it's not even funny. I'm out. Also, it's Hollywood HDR, so even if you're considering watching it to look at Vanessa Kirby for a couple of hours, you can't, because it's so dark you can't see anything. Hollywood is so dead.

'Night Always Comes' delivered a good flick. I do tend to like these gritty crime dramas, so I'm pleased to say that I can list this one in that bracket. Vanessa Kirby comes in with a strong performance, I'm happy to belatedly see her act as the front and centre of a film. There is plenty of action across the 108mins, atmospherically the movie is spot on. It can get quite frustrating but seemingly by design, Doreen is particuarly infuriating - gaslighter of the century, that one! Bar Kirby, this also minimally has Randall Park, Julia Fox, Michael Kelly and Eli Roth. I will say some of the dialogue didn't quite do it for me, mainly for Kirby in fact. It just felt unnatural/ill-fitting to me here and there, but in fairness Kirby's acting prowess and the dramatic events are sturdy enough that I quickly forgot any issues I had with that. Worth noting, still.

Added to the list of movies I wish I never watched. Not entertaining and writing was horrible. Sometimes I wonder how these types of movies even get made, but do not recommend watching this movie unless you are a family member of someone unfortunate to be casted in it.