I have to give Mob Land a lot of credit. For a Saban film it actually had an advertising campaign, a trailer with a slowed down cover of House of the Rising Sun, a theatrical poster, and even a theatrical release! That's awesome! They're really stepping up their game. When I saw the trailer for Mob Land I figured I'd have to get this from RedBox but I'll be darned, it actually came soon to a theater near me.
And ya know what? It really wasn't a bad movie! Which unfortunately kind of plays to the audiences detriment. It's not bad enough to be fun and not good enough to be fun. It's a middle of the road picture that grasps at some really interesting ideas but doesn't have the finesse to make them work effectively.
For example our lead character is an out of work mechanic with Parkinson's who is at his wits end on how to provide for his family (interesting!), his solution is to rob a local drug dealer with his scumbag uncle (not very interesting). When the big boss hears about the robbery he sends his top head smasher to go recover the stolen loot and deliver the punks responsible. It's been done a lot.
The acting is good, actually. Stephen Dorff and John Travolta give a solid effort and have the charisma and depth to add nuance to their characters. Kevin Dillon plays that moocher, kinda scummy uncle we all have. There are decent performances here. It's the script that squanders their potential to push the movie out of mediocrity.
Mob Land is a movie very much in the same vein as No Country For Old Men, The Place Beyond The Pines, and Hell or High Water. Yes, those films had staggering budgets and a plethora of Grade A talent but most importantly they had wonderful scripts. The difference between Mob Land and those other pictures is that when characters have philosophical conversations about their motives, or meandering questions about their situations, it's interesting. They're building to something. Through misdirection and unconvention these films grip the audience and never let go.
I feel like Mob Land tries hard to be a character study disguised as a crime drama but it doesn't know how to examine itself. It's a vacuum sucking up all this inspiration from wonderful films but it just sits there with the pieces.
Also, Mob Land suffers from some pacing issues, that meandering, philosophical dialogue I mentioned earlier? There is a lot of it here. And we're sitting in cars listening to it, sitting in diners listening to it, sitting in garages listening to it. But philosophy turns to redundancy; it simply never goes anywhere.
Unlike the camera in this movie which goes everywhere! I've coined a new term for how this movie was shot: "Chimp-Cam". 95% of this movie was shot handheld with a stomach-churning shaky cam that is crotch level looking up at the actors. I literally, in my mind, pictured a chimpanzee shooting this movie. And it made it better. 20% of that 95% were tracking shots that were tracking shots just to be tracking shots. Do we need a nauseatingly shaky tracking shot to watch a guy walk from his car to his front door? What's the point?
I don't want to rag on this movie, truly. It's a massive step in the right direction for Saban Films. I feel like they've made an actual film in Mob Land.
If this script could've had one or two more passes that took those longer dialogue exchanges and cut them down to be leaner and more tense...shoot this would be so much better. If they could've given a little more dimension or originality to our lead character's development, hot dang this would be a different review. If they would've hired an actual director of photography and not a half trained chimpanzee...
