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Sadsack husbands, missing suitcases, devious strippers, destabilising conversations with hitmen doubling up as metaphysical emissaries: this hyperactively structured crime thriller lines up many of the usual noir suspects, but loves messing with them. Often scenes end with left-field segues, such as when a cocky PI suddenly finds his car towed by a couple of insolent cops. It’s not so much that the inhabitants of the Texan outpost of the title are caught in the genre’s meaningless existential whirlpool; rather, they’re being actively toyed with by some mischievous prankster deity (AKA debut director Shane Atkinson).
Just before his vehicle is impounded, Skip the detective (Steve Zahn) gives tragic spouse Ray (John Magaro) the skinny: his wife Stacy-Lynn (Megan Stevenson) is keeping a regular motel appointment with another guy. Desperate to keep her sweet, Ray must find the money she wants to set up the beauty-salon solution to her limp life. So when he is mistakenly accosted in a parking lot by a sleazeball offering a bag of cash in return for offing a local lawyer, he sees both a financial opening and a chance to assert that he’s no pushover. The only problem is that Harry (Dylan Baker), the real hitman, is out there, and he is not only vexed at missing out on the job, but also from the Anton Chigurh school of properly “finishing” things.
Stepping on to Atkinson’s carousel of opportunists is undeniably fun. Ray, who obviously botches the job, teams up with Skip to locate the lawyer’s missing stash – which means, among other things, bogwashing his legal partner and shaking down the local used-car magnate. But where traditional noir often uses humour as a pendulum to swing us back into dismay, Atkinson pitches it high and constant. Too high at times, and close to parodic. The dreadful Stacy-Lynn, for example, still hoards her prom-queen tiara and reminisces about how she clinched it by playing American Girl on the flute.
This caricatural habit means the film’s character-deepenings – even Stacy-Lynn gets one – don’t happen until very late, while scene-stealing Baker is left slightly out on a limb. As he flips effortlessly between affable and adamant, with his tart, vampiric lips, it’s a reminder he hasn’t been seen often enough in feature films in recent years.
If Atkinson isn’t quite the Coen inheritor he aspires to be, this hectic flurry of schemers, snatchers and low-lifes puts him three-quarters of the way to inventing a new genre: Texan noir farce.
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