Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
Director: Michele Civetta, Defiant Screen Entertainment.
A down-on-his-luck social worker finds himself in over his head when he tries to protect a client from her recently paroled husband – a maniacal drug dealer out to reclaim his priceless stash.
He unknowingly gets in the middle of a drug heist. Can he save the family from the violent threat of a maniacal drug dealer and his crew, desperate to reclaim their priceless stash?
This mature crime thriller is set in St. Louis. It centres on Parker Jode (Shea Whigham, Joker, Tigerland, Pride and Glory), the sort of hardened, drinks-a-lot-of- alcohol kind of man, a reprobate who cares about his charges. He’s particularly concerned about single mom Dahlia Montrose (Olivia Munn), whose husband is in prison, and her precocious teenage daughter, Ashley (Taegen Burns).
Parker is more of a friend of the family than city bureaucrat, even volunteering to drive Ashley to school to help Dahlia out.
Then Dahlia’s husband, Mike (Zach Avery), returns to the household, resuming his criminal activities under the patronage of local kingpin Duke Harmaday (Frank Grillo, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Endgame). Putting the family in danger, Mike gets involved in a robbery and uses his daughter as a drug mule.
Raw chaos ensues, also involving Parker’s estranged father, a Vietnam vet and jazz musician (Bruce Dern, The Artist’s Wife, Coming Home, Black Sunday).
The cliché-ridden screenplay by Civetta, with Alex Felix Bendaña and Andrew Levitas, displays the intention as being serious, but not its implementation.
