PLOT: An ex-con (Jason Sudeikis) on parole is determined to make the most of the time his terminally ill lover (Evangeline Lilly) has left, but fate has other plans.
REVIEW: A few years ago, I saw a fantastic movie called Big Bad Wolves, which was directed by Aharon Keshales & Navot Papushado. Quentin Tarantino actually named it his favorite film of 2013. After a few years working on other projects, both Keshales and Papushado came out with movies this year, with the latter directing the terrific Gunpowder Milkshake for Netflix. For his part, Keshales made this deeply personal neo-noir, South of Heaven Papushado has a writing and producing credit), which comes out this weekend and is undoubtedly a hidden gem just waiting to be discovered.
Anyone who’s been watching Jason Sudeikis come into his own on Ted Lasso will get a big kick out of seeing him in a different mode here. He’s highly effective as an ex-con named Jimmy Ray. Released on parole, he only has one mission in life. His beloved fiancee, Evangeline Lilly’s Annie, is dying of lung cancer, and he wants to make the most of the time she has left. Too bad then that his parole officer, Shea Whigham’s Schmidt, is a scumbag who blackmails him back into a life of crime. Circumstance doesn’t favour Jimmy, with him eventually ending up $500k in debt to a local mobster, Mike Colter’s Whit Price, who kidnaps Annie to entice him to make good. Jimmy, in turn, kidnaps Whit’s son (Thaddeus J. Mixon), hoping to make an exchange.
South of Heaven is a delicious mix of genres. It certainly qualifies as a noir, even if Lilly’s Annie is as far from a femme fatale as you can get. To a certain extent, Jimmy seems cursed by fate but also fortunate that Annie is utterly devoted to him. This is returned, and every decision he makes throughout the film is made with disregard for his ultimate fate. He just wants more time with Annie, who only has a year left anyway. Beyond that, he doesn’t care.
That aspect makes this a tragic romance in a lot of ways, with an open-to-interpretation ending that’ll no doubt leave a lump in your throat. But it’s also a rollicking thriller with some welcome doses of carnage. The gore, when it hits, is almost comically brutal, and the gun-blazing finale will leave Ted Lasso fans hoping that Sudeikis might one day go the Bob Odenkirk route and give action a try. In South of Heaven he racks up a mean body count, although while some have been calling this shootout John Wick-esque, that’s far from accurate. Jimmy is a desperate man, and the violence he inflicts is far from polished. This movie is more similar to A History of Violence or Blood Simple than it is to John Wick.
Keshales has noted the films of Don Siegel (Dirty Harry) as an influence, and that’s felt here. He cited Charley Varrick (buy it here) as an influence, which seems apt as that movie cast Walter Matthau against type as a cold-blooded anti-hero. With someone like Eastwood, Charley Varrick would have been fine, but Matthau made it a classic. In South of Heaven, Keshales could have cast an action hero, but there’s no way it would have had the impact it does without Sudeikis. Of course, it helps that he plays romance and drama just as well, and his chemistry with Lilly, who’s rarely had such a meaty role, is perfect.
The supporting cast, on the whole, is strong, with Mike Colter (Luke Cage), an unusually sympathetic villain, who bonds with Lilly over their shared history with cancer. However, he’s also brutal, as shown in a gut-wrenching, brutal scene where he interrogates Jimmy’s best pal, “Honest” Frank (Jeremy Bobb), with a nail gun. The great Michael Pare plays his main henchman (I always get a kick out of seeing him – he was so good in his cameo as Barry Seal in The Infiltrator). At the same time, Shea Whigham is oily and despicable as Jimmy’s monstrous parole officer.
Hopefully, some of Sudeikis’s Ted Lasso fans should give South of Heaven a try, as it is one of those under-the-radar gems (kind of like Shot Caller) that encourage me to keep covering the indie scene. A movie like this deserves to find an audience, as all-involved did their best to make a great little movie, and more than delivered. Given that the Ted Lasso season finale just aired, you can make this part of a wild Sudeikis double bill. Years ago (during his wacky comedy phase), I wasn’t sold on him, but I think he excels at drama, with a real sense of empathy and pathos coming through in all of his recent performances. Don’t miss this one, folks.