Joel on Film

A curious combination of genre leanings nearly carries Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice, which has the plot of a crime thriller, the gimmick of a sci-fi adventure and the tone of a comedy of errors, in which the entire thing hinges upon our acceptance or dismissal of a specific visual gag. That gag is the sight of twin Vince Vaughns, with the actor taking on the dual role of the eponymous Nick, a casually ruthless gangster, and the other eponymous Nick, a version of the first one from six months in the future. The gimmick is that Nick has traveled back in time to right a wrong.

The gist of the plot is that Nick, inadvertently and mostly through inaction, fingered his best friend Mike (James Marsden)—known as “Quick Draw” Mike for his skill with a firearm—as a rat upon learning of his affair with Nick’s wife Alice (Eiza González). More specifically, he didn’t do much to dissuade crime boss Sosa (Keith David) of the information that led him to that realization, and after some opening-scene business with a time machine, it transports him half a year into the past. At the same time, Sosa’s adoptive son Jimmy Boy (Jimmy Tatro) has just been released from a stint in prison as a result of the unknown rat’s ratting.

There is some undeniable fun to be found in this oddball intersection of so many different modes of operation, and writer/director BenDavid Grabinski does a solid-enough job selling us on his management of those tones. A large part of that is due to the actors, with Vaughn ably differentiating between Future Nick and Present Nick, Marsden once again demonstrating his comedic chops, and González outperforming both of them in a comic jewel of a performance that isn’t as simplistic as it probably might have seemed on the page. Even Tatro, playing a nothing role like Jimmy Boy, is able to let loose and have some profane fun as the aloof doofus.

Good actors can get you a long way, but this is also a movie devoted to action set pieces that increasingly feel out of step with the lighter comic touch of the rest of the movie. The violence here is occasionally, and surprisingly, savage, such as a scene where Stephen Root plays a man who might be a cannibal assassin—only for the real assassin (a cameo by a far more believable actor who will not be revealed here) to show up and immediately be shot through the face with high-caliber ammunition. The final showdown, too, is a big shootout where the impact of smaller-caliber bullets is still not edited down for any sort of effect, and that feels a bit wrong when it comes to this story.

Maybe, though, that’s just the impression that this story gives as it goes through the motions—at first, quite effectively, with the strange set of circumstances around Nick’s twin appearances amusingly interrupting the flow of every other character’s basic understanding of how the world works. Eventually, though, it’s just going through the motions in another way. That it even leads to a big shootout like the one that takes place is a disappointment on principle, because it’s far less ambitious than what came before.

Still, flashes of innovation and even a faintly emotional story eke through here, with the latter a pleasant surprise, at least until it only matters to further the action sequences. Mike and Nick’s friendship feels lived-in and basically real, mainly because Vaughn and Marsden have solid chemistry. That also translates to the rapport between Marsden and González, because the affair they’re having means far more to each of them than either initially anticipated.

The result is a movie at odds with itself, because it’s not just that the movie wants to be in the crime, sci-fi, and comedy genres. Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice also wants to be all the attributes that typically come along with the many good movies in each of those genres, and its wobbly understanding of good plot structure can’t sustain the pressure.

Rating: **½ (out of ****)