A lot of bad behavior goes on in rural America, although the eponymous town in LaRoy, Texas might host more than the usual share of adulterers, assassins, blackmailers and con artists. Our first glimpse of this seedy underbelly arrives in the film’s opening scene, when a seemingly mild-mannered driver (Dylan Baker) gives a lift to a man walking along the side of the highway. The hitcher mentions that it’s dangerous to give a stranger a lift, but the driver suggests that it might be the other way around. Menace lurks in unexpected places, in other words, and there are enough dumbass cops and criminals everywhere to keep things interesting.
The script, by writer/director Shane Atkinson, dabbles in some Fargo-adjacent elements, but effectively takes a fresh approach to its darkly humorous tale of small-town crime, bad decisions and hapless detectives. After all, there’s bottomless potential in the collision of folks who think they’re smarter than they are and those who are far more dangerous than they appear. The desolate flatlands provide a sort of blank canvas upon which chaos can unfold. Once the plot springs into gear, you may find it hard to follow every wrinkle and twist, but coherence is not the point. Rather, it’s the pleasure of watching these characters tangle with each other and, especially, their own fatally flawed instincts.
As Ray, the downtrodden family man at the center of this tragicomedy of errors, John Magaro provides a relatable ballast to the gallery of fools and demons who populate LaRoy. He’s just received an unsolicited tip from a private detective, Skip (Steve Zahn), that his wife, Stacy-Lynn, (Megan Stevenson) might be cheating on him, and he doesn’t know what to do with the information. When he lurks outside the seedy motel that his wife has used for her assignations, he’s mistaken for a hit man and handed an envelope full of cash. Ray isn’t a killer, but his wounded pride and financial strain conspire to make him consider it.
The script gleefully pushes Ray, one inch at a time, into actions the character would never take if not for some very particular wounds to his ego. It’s a tricky performance, requiring a kind of noble naiveté, and Magaro is masterful at depicting Ray’s incremental slide toward corruption. You know he shouldn’t do it, but you also know you’d be tempted, too. Hastening this descent into iniquity, Skip the P.I. is desperate to prove himself to the local police. They mock him mercilessly, as if the law enforcement professionals of LaRoy never matured beyond middle school. Contrast this with the implacable advance of the actual cold-blooded hit man, and the film becomes a confection of whiplash moments, zinging between deadpan humor and genuine emotional anguish as Ray sees his choices exposed and his fortunes diminish.
In fact, it’s the comedy that puts such a sharp point on these characters’ dilemmas. As her layers of deception fall away, large and small, the panic in Stacy-Lynn’s eyes is both exaggerated for effect and genuinely affecting. The same for Skip’s agonizingly ham-fisted attempts to prove his mettle as a detective, while also revealing that he misspelled that very occupation on his business card. For the people of LaRoy, Texas, both the wicked and the righteous, life is a comedy that ends in tragedy, and the film condenses that insight into a satisfying shot and chaser.
Photo courtesy of Brainstorm Media
The post LaRoy, Texas appeared first on Spectrum Culture.