Vanessa Kirby, who worked far too hard to save the unnecessarily glum Fantastic Four: First Steps, is yet again overexerting herself in an unworthy vehicle. Adapted from Willy Vlautin’s novel, Night Always Comes opens with a lazy lesson in the failings of trickle-down economics delivered as incidental radio broadcasts on homelessness, low wages and grocery bills.
Sarah Conradt’s screenplay starts strongly with a punchy save-the-farm premise. Lynette (Kirby) is desperate to put down a deposit on the family home she shares with her indolent mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and older brother, Kenny (Zack Gottsagen). The crumbling house is not much, but ownership will keep social services away from Kenny, who has Down syndrome. Mom, alas, has other ideas. She blows the downpayment on a car, leaving her frantic daughter scrambling to raise $25,000 over one eventful – and seedy – night.
At first there are welcome parallels between Benjamin Caron’s film and Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov’s similarly themed 2014 thriller, The Lesson.
Unhappily, Night Always Comes quickly abandons its real-world dilemma as it swerves into low-life criminality. Lynette juggles prostitution, bartending and cocaine dealing as she encounters safe-crackers, low-lives and Eli Roth’s sleazy, ill-defined kingpin.
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Despite valiant efforts from Stephen James and Michael Kelly – playing an ill-defined hoodlum and a procurer, respectively – Lynette’s low-income hinterland feels strained and inauthentic.
The overture talks about ordinary Americans falling through the cracks due to one outsized bill or missed payment; the world onscreen groans with worn-out crime-movie tropes. The film seems unable to differentiate between penury and cop-show-brand lawlessness.
Kirby, who also served as a producer, gives it socks as her embattled heroine gets robbed, swindled, glassed and sexually assaulted. Not even she can make contrived meetings with her former pimp or the theme-park poverty feel authentic.
Streaming on Netflix from 8am on Friday, August 15th
