Netflix Gritty Noir Movie Reptile Is Worth a Watch. Gotta say that anything that even attempts to approximate True Detective season 1, even if it turns out to be a bit watered down approximation?? Is still totally worth our time. (Can I make a side comment that it just GUTS me that I see Matthew McConaughey as the pinnacle of ANYTHING? Can I? Because it’s horrible that I think he is the ABSOLUTE BEST noir thing ever. Hate. IT. There, I’ve said it. But it’s true.)
Regardless, Reptile is the latest Netflix Noir crime thriller entry, in Grant Singer’s directorial debut. (He co-wrote the screenplay with Benjamin Brewer and Benicio del Toro). And it’s Benicio that helms this film (alongside Justin Timberlake) as he attempts to battle his own demons, and the demons swarming all around him throughout.
Quick Reptile Movie Run Through
Justin Timberlake, I mean, Will Grady, is a powerful and up and coming real estate magnate. Will and Summer, his girlfriend, were flipping foreclosures over and over again as they ride the wave towards fortune. Meanwhile, Will’s mother, Camille (Fances Fisher) [between the two they have issues that Freud would have loved to have untangle… or nurture, I’m not sure which] partners with her son to drive their vaulting empire further along. Eventually though, Will comes home one day to find Summer horribly stabbed to death. Welp, 90% of the time, in cases like these, it’s the significant other. So it HAS to be Will. But nope… Justin, I mean Will makes it a convincing denial that he was ever involved.
Before no time at all, Detective Tom Nichols (Del Toro) and his partner, Dan Cleary (played by Ato Essandoh – who you know from The Diplomat) have more suspects than there are actors in this movie. So maybe it’s Will. Maybe it’s Summer’s ex, Sam? Definitely, Sam doesn’t seem quite right. I mean we see footage of him cutting hair from strangers on the bus (who we eventually find to have arranged the hair into a full-on angel, but I’m getting ahead of myself). And we also have Eli Phillips who has been bothering Will for years, ever since his forceful eviction by Will and his mother caused his father to commit suicide. Will could also be our totally obsessed weirdo, or he might be our hero? I’m getting hero vibes here? Should I be? Can’t be! Because Will is innocent!
Simultaneously, we have the world of Tom Nichols, and his day in and day out fellow police community friends and co-workers. There is something about these guys. Can’t put my finger on it. But they aren’t exactly Goodfellas. Tom’s wife, Judy (Alicia Silverstone… is that you???) helps him work the theories on the murder, and seems to possibly also… maybe… be having an affair? Or maybe Tom is just horribly jealous? But it’s his fellow detectives that really make me wonder that something else might be going on here.
Eventually Detective Nichols seems to be told to back down after they have their potential scapegoat. But Nichols isn’t convinced. And he continues to hunt for Summer’s murderer. Eventually, Nichols notices that the drugs found on another house bust, were the exact same found elsewhere just recently. Christmas packing tape to the rescue. So what is happening here?? What is the bigger picture? Well, Detective Nichols, finally traces it all back to a real estate investment company, which dissolves, and the same PO Box connects it over to a police security company within Nichols’ group of friends. And with that, it all clicks for Nichols.
Explain What Is Happening With the Movie Reptile?
Nichols has realized that this police security firm, is utilized to target nice properties in the area. They “bust” the homeowners on false drug charges by planting kilos and kilos of drugs at the house. Well, when crimes of this sort happen, the police are allowed to seize the drugs, the cars, and the home. The home then goes into foreclosure, and is picked up by the Whitefish realty group and sold at a massive financial gain. The drugs then are “destroyed” out of the evidence storage room… wherein the drugs then turn up again at yet another person’s car the group needs to destroy. Or on to the next house they want to pick up at a bargain.
So Detective Nichols knows. And that is where the movie turns into an internal, silent contemplation about what he should do. We know that Nichols has a past of screw-ups and moral failings. We know that he has made the wrong decision in his past before. But what is he going to do here? Will he take the Rolex, and the extra pay, and just the easier path into the shadows? Or will he call out his friends for their schemes, and worse, their tacit support for an absolutely unconscionable murderer? And this group of organized criminals, they also wonder which way their “friend” will go.
As the movie careens to its overly simplistic end, we watch as Nichols agrees to meet up with his detective friends, and ends up exacting his own form of Justice through his more exact aim. The most important moment coming from a couple of kids’ and their errant Frisbee throw, hitting the window of the house at exactly the right time to give Nichols the leg up. (I pretty much presumed it had to be Nichols’ wife, coming to his rescue… that is the only screenplay solve that doesn’t make you go… WAIT WHAT? But alas, that wasn’t the case, it was in fact a random group of kids.)
Final Thoughts on Netflix’s Movie Reptile
Let’s be clear, Reptile isn’t going to earn anyone any sort of accolades from Hollywood or the Oscars, or even Siskel and Ebert. Mainly because the film, which worked so hard to misdirect and miscues the audience the whole movie long, didn’t really tie everything up in the end. And the resolution it does provide falls back on simplicity after providing that extra clever twist again and again. Regardless, I still enjoyed it… and any time I get to see Del Toro act? I’m game for a go.
Edited by: CY