Lamar reviews - Arkansas 5-08

I’ve always said the R-rated comedy is tricky to pull off, but even trickier than that is the Dark Comedy. At the top of this list would be Fargo, Pulp Fiction, and Snatch. Arkansas turns out to not be anywhere close to that level. I had high expectations for this movie. Dark comedy with Vince Vaughn and John Malkovich, how can you possibly go wrong? Turns out you sorta can. Biggest problem is Liam Hemsworth as the character Kyle.  Not only doesn’t he bring anything to his role, he actually sucks out a good portion of the air in whatever room he is in. While his partner in crime, Swin, played by Clark Duke lights up every scene he’s in, but it’s not enough to offset the vacuum caused by Hemsworth.

Kyle is at the bottom of a drug dealing operation. He has no aspiration to do more than the minimum and get drunk when he wants. He teams u with Swin who is quirky from the top of his thin stringy man bun, past his wispy, barely visible mustache, down to his ridiculous, colorful Hammer pants. 

The difference is where Liam Hemsworth plays Kyle as the strong, handsome silent type that doesn’t give a crap, Duke leans in to the quirkiness of Swin to the point of pride. When a girl he’s trying to pick up says “you’re just creepy”, he replies, “How do you feel about creepy? Do you like it?” He winds up getting the girl. They wind up working with Ranger Bright, played by John Malkovich, a park ranger who runs drugs for Frog, the head of the operation. Frog is played by Vince Vaughn. Another of his middle managers is played by Vivica Fox, and she is referred to by Her.

Everything is moving actually very slowly for the first 40 minutes until it finally picks up. Things start to happen and bodies start to drop and it puts Kyle and Swin on Frog’s radar. They are victims of circumstances but to Frog they are an unnecessary problem that he has to deal with.

The movie is told in parts. Each of those parts show the history of each player. Where he started and how he got to his current place in life.  It was a little weird but it worked.

The movie is 117 minutes, Rated R for violence, language, and brief nudity.

The first 40 minutes was a little boring, it picked up but never actually got going, and I wasn’t crazy about the ending. Somebody besides Liam Hemsworth may have helped. If Hemsworth had drank a cup of coffee or drank a Bang and actually done something that would have been good too.

My Score: 3 very low key Budweisers

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