Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Benjamin Caron
Starring: Vanessa Kirby, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Julia Fox, Eli Roth, Randall Park
There comes a time in every British actress's career where they trade period frocks for black roots and henna tattoos to portray a member of the American working class. Vanessa Kirby's time for this rite of passage has arrived with Night Always Comes, which sees her reteam with The Crown director Benjamin Caron. Kirby may have left the palace but she's in a right royal mess in this film, which mashes together the "one crazy night" format of movies like After Hours and Collateral with an Uncut Gems/Small World of Sammy Lee-esque story of a desperate attempt to gather a sum of money in a limited window.
The sum in question is $25,000. That's how much Kirby's Lynette needs for a down payment that will save her from losing the family home she shares with her down syndrome brother Kenny (Zack Gottsagen) and their deadbeat mother Doreen (Jennifer Jason Leigh). When Doreen inexplicably spends that exact figure on a new car, Lynette is forced to take desperate measures to amass the money in time to meet the real estate agent's deadline of 9am the following morning.
Lynette is working two jobs - at a bakery in the early hours of the morning and a bar at night - while attending college in the afternoons. But on this night she slips back into her former life as a sex worker, arranging to meet with a former client (Randall Park) in the hopes that he might lend her the money. When this doesn't go to plan she inveigles an ex-con co-worker (Stephan James) into her scheme to crack open a safe in the apartment of high class escort Gloria (Julia Fox). The night's hijinks also lead Lynette back to the pimp (Michael Kelly) who exploited her as a teen and an encounter with a sleazy drug dealer (Eli Roth).
While Kirby is convincingly distressed and the script places Lynette in several perilous positions, it too often allows her to walk away unscathed, and the various bad decisions she makes never catch up with her. The safe is filled with contraband hidden by a politician, but the movie never follows up on what might have been an interesting clash between a woman from the wrong side of the tracks and a corrupt member of America's elite. Every time Lynette gets in trouble she's able to simply run/drive away. A more thrilling version of this would have the various people she pisses off across the night continually hunting her down rather than simply shrugging her off.
The movie suffers badly from several plot contrivances that make little sense. There's no initial attempt to explain why Doreen would so recklessly blow the money she needs to keep a roof over her family's head, because the script frustratingly holds back a key detail for a late reveal. Similarly, an act of cruelty by another character comes off as inconsistent and unlikely. With Lynette going to so many extremes, we can't help but wonder why she doesn't just attempt to blackmail her married client into giving her the money. The general gritty tone of the film is derailed by the miscasting of Park, who acts as though he's in one of his regular comic roles, and filmmaker Roth, who simply can't act.
I'll tell you who can act: Kirby and James. When those two performers are on screen together Night Always Comes springs to life. There's a quiet racial undercurrent in a young black man being led astray by a white woman that bubbles under the surface, but James convinces us a conflicted man who knows he's being taken advantage of but can't say no to the possible reward. Gottsagen and Leigh are given far less to work with, but impress in their limited screen time.
One crazy night movies are right up my darkly lit alley, so I can't say I was ever bored by Night Always Comes, and with an actress as captivating as Kirby in practically every frame, it's always engaging to some degree. It's just a shame that Night Always Comes goes through the motions of its rote plot instead of coming up with more novel ways to enliven this potentially thrilling scenario.
Night Always Comes is on Netflix from August 15th.
