When nihilism is the prime component running through your movie, the end result becomes a tricky tightrope-act: some films take their alleged pointlessness and weave it into something artistic and transcendent (having a visionary director helps); others just wallow in their excesses and, by the end, nothing has been imparted or conveyed. "Cohen and Tate" falls into the latter category. For 86 minutes, the film plays out like a first-year screen writing exercise (two mismatched mob hit men in a moving car with a kid who's witnessed a murder). Unfortunately, even the fair pairing of Roy Scheider (fantastic as the jaded old-timer) and Adam Baldwin (as a young, kill-crazy psycho) cannot raise writer-director Eric Red's clunky, motivation-weak, and outright contrived script to transcendent heights. What we have here is a fair crime thriller with some decent action and suspense, but a go-nowhere plot that, by the end, feels maddeningly unfinished. It also doesn't help that our child-in-peril (Harley Cross) gives one of the worst performances in screen history (nor does it make much sense that our bickering hit men would put tape over his mouth until the film is almost over).
4.5 out of 10
4.5 out of 10