The movies love a good conman. Handsome, charismatic, he’s a guy doing a bad thing for something or someone good. That’s why we fall for them, believing no matter the crimes they commit, they’ll make right by the end. That’s what we hope is happening at the start of director Matthew Gentile‘s American Murderer, a well-made crime-thriller that may not bring anything new to the genre, but is a sturdy production with a memorable lead performance.
Jason Derek Brown (Tom Pelphrey) is a conman. He’s very good at it, mostly. But the show is over, in debt to some bad people who want their money. Eighty-thousand in three days or he’s dead. Time to up his game–straight up robbery. Enter the FBI, who’ve been tracking him for years, Special Agent Lance Leising (Ryan Phillippe) on the hunt. He’s determined, he’s persistent, and he’s angry. When Brown does the unthinkable, he goes on the run, seeking help from his brother (Paul Schneider) while wrecking the lives of those who came to trust him. But how long can it last?
Based on a true story, American Murderer marks Gentile’s debut, building a story that is as much a character study as a crime thriller. While Gentile’s clearly influenced by the likes of Michael Mann and Brian De Palma to name a few, he creates a number of impactful moments that stand on their own, led mostly by Pelphrey’s charged performance. It’s something to watch, running the gamut of wildly over-the-top to sublimely chaotic, the contrast from ego-driven cocaine pounding party boy to a desperate fugitive making all the wrong choices. It’s his movie, top-to-bottom, despite a solid supporting cast who help prop him up throughout. That includes Schneider but also Shantel VanSanten playing Brown’s younger sister, caught in a web of lies early on, trying to make sense of her troubled brother.
Gentile juggles a lot, trying to tell a heist story gone wrong with a family drama that begins with Brown as a boy. Both work but neither go as deep as they feel they could, leaving us with plenty to become invested with but lacking the punch the film seems ready to provide. There’s good chemistry between Pelphrey and VanSanten but the story doesn’t have time to flesh it out so their decisions don’t sting as much as they should. Same with a subplot with Idina Menzel, playing a victim whose part in the film seems easily cut, despite her good efforts. I wanted these to pull me into the complexity of Brown’s behavior, but they simply come off like filler.
So too is the pursuit by Leising, Philippe committed but Gentile cutting away every time it seems the investigation starts to get cooking. I got the sense that these moments were filmed but left out for the sake of time, the cat and mouse opportunity between cop and criminal–done so well in films like Mann’s Heat–coming up short. It’s perhaps unfair to make the comparison, but when Gentile sets the stage for such a thing, it’s a little disappointing not to have it play out.
Still, there’s a lot to like. Gentile is patient with several important moments, and gives Pelphrey room to push the limits. He’s on screen for most of the film and while it could have easily swung into caricature, Pelphrey walks the line almost to perfection. When you look at where he’s at when it begins to a key scene as he walks away from camera, there’s quite the evolution. Well-paced, well-written, and well-acted, American Murderer is a solid pick. Recommended.