Starring: Jerrod Carmichael, Christopher Abbott, Tiffany Haddish, Lavell Crawford, JB Smoove, Henry Winkler
Distributor: Umbrella Films
Runtime: 86 mins. Reviewed in Sep 2022
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc
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A serious comedy about two friends, one with mental health issues and the other overwhelmed by what life has thrown up. They decide to kill each other on the count of three… But that is not how it works out.
The title has the dynamic touch about it. What will happen on the count of three? Taking off for a race? Or, weapons drawn? Face-off?
This is a brief film which had success at the Sundance Festival. And it has been directed by Jerrod Carmichael, best known for comedy television and video films.
On the one hand, because it is about weapons drawn at the count of three, the themes are serious. In fact, the initial focus is mutual suicide. However, there are many comic touches throughout, in the portrayal of the characters, some absurd situations, eccentric behaviour. Which makes the whole film a strange mixture of the disturbing and the entertaining.
It opens with the count of three situation, two men facing each other, pointing guns at each other – then a shot heard. Then flashbacks to explain the background of each of the characters.
And, they prove interesting in themselves. Val (Carmichael) is an African-American who works in a garage, is depressed, rebuked for taking too much time for smokes, goes to the toilet, takes out his belt and attempts to hang himself. He is stopped by one of the co-workers. By contrast, Kevin (Abbott), is in a mental institution, in therapy, abrasive yet apologetic to the therapist – a mixture of depression and courtesy, but who has attempted suicide. He and Val have been best friends for years – and Val comes to help him escape and to lead back to that count of three sequence.
No secret that, at the beginning of the day, the count of three goes awry. The decision is then as to how they would spend their last day, leaving the suicide until the end of the day. They have a vehicle so this is a variation on a road movie: time spent at a diner where Kevin encounters someone from school days who bullied him, an attempt to visit a doctor from the past but who is absent from his surgery, the decision to go motorcycle riding as they did in the past, Val visiting is father after many years, a confrontation and a demand for the money that his father stole from him, a fight, Val wounded and the couple going to the store to get bandages, ignored by the man at the counter who is trying to get his accounts in order, Kevin threatening him with the gun, taking the supplies but leaving money for payment.
The money Val wanted and took from his father’s draw was for his wife whom he visits, who rejects him. It is a highly dramatic sequence when Kevin goes back to find the doctor, a flashback to his childhood, Henry Winkler cameo as the seemingly sympathetic doctor until he asks a predatory question.
Ultimately, there is a police chase, the police converging, the two men talking on the edge of a cliff (and our wondering whether they will do a Thelma and Louise exit).
It doesn’t work out exactly as we might have anticipated which means that we will have to see the film to understand the two better and to discover their final decisions. Brief but telling.
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