A pitch-black comedy akin to a white trash version of “Fargo,” “The Death of Dick Long,” is the sophomore directorial effort of Daniel Scheinert—the self-described redneck half of directing duo DANIELS, who created the terrifically inventive “Swiss Army Man” (filmmaking partner Daniel Kwan sits this one out). And, just like Joel and Ethan Coen‘s crime thriller, Scheinert’s film is infused with the playful embrace of cultural stereotypes that come with the genre. Here, it’s the South (and Alabama, in particular), and Scheinert’s latest is a dark, but gut-bustingly hilarious, good time at the movies, all due to his gift for infusing tonally perfect humor with sincere and seriously drawn narrative momentum. In fact, there are no dull moments in this ridiculously brutal, often severely dumb, but enjoyable, film about two dim-witted guys who are in over their heads trying to cover up the accidental death of their friend Dick Long.
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An affectionate paean to small-town Alabama, clichés aside, the locale is drawn in ‘Dick Long’ as a spot in the country where people seem less concerned with life ambitions and more with drinking beer, smoking weed, and shooting their guns off in the woods. The dilemma this film presents centers on Zeke Olsen (Michael Abbott Jr.), Earl Wyeth (Andre Hyland), and their friend Dick Long (Scheinert himself), who start their evening jamming in the garage, quite terribly I might add, to Staind’s early-2000s faux-grunge caterwauling “It’s Been a While.” One should note, a particular highlight of this film is the soundtrack concocted by Scheinert, which seems to have been assembled via a collection of the worst 2000s rock bands imaginable (Creed, Papa Roach, and further ear cancer of the sort).
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Zeke has a wife and daughter, and Earl is an unemployed loser who mostly drinks beer and does nothing. The film opens with the three of them hanging out on a Saturday night, with Dick uttering the sentence “Y’all wanna get weird?” What follows is a night of debauchery, which ends the movie cutting forward to Dick in the backseat of Zeke’s car bleeding to death. How did this happen? We don’t really know, but Zeke and Earl end up, quite foolishly, dumping Dick’s body in front of the local emergency hospital and driving away. Not too long after that, Dick is pronounced dead.
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What follows is a panic-stricken 24 hours for Zeke and Earl, struggling to cover up whatever the hell happened to Dick and trying to wipe their hands clean from any involvement in the crime. Part of the film’s charm is that Zeke and Earl aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed, which results in an amusingly inept cover-up. Zeke’s wife and, almost anybody they speak to, starts to suspect them. It doesn’t help that the backseat of their car, where Dick laid dying, is soaked in blood, which prompts these geniuses to try and dump the vehicle in a lake, but the car never sinks. The problems only continue to pile up; Dick’s concerned wife (Jess Weixler) wonders why he never came home, and Zeke’s wife realizing her husband is in a heap of trouble. Officer Dudley (Sarah Baker) is this film’s heroine, much like Frances McDormand‘s Marge in “Fargo.”
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‘Dick Long’ provides top-notch comical Southern banter between Zeke and Earl, which never feels skit-like or caricatured, but rather authentic to the setting. Watching two simple-minded fools try to manage this crisis is part of the fun. Wisely, Abbott Jr., and Hyland’s performances are irony-free. No one’s ridiculing the stereotypes here, rather attempting to endear the viewer to them and it works. Scheinert and Billy Chew‘s deeply attuned screenplay pulls off the Coen-esque theatrics well, and while the movie is clearly indebted to them, it never feels like a retread either. Shot with a lot of handheld camerawork, there’s an extra bit of realism involved as well, as if a cinema verité team showed up in Alabama, hitting the jackpot in their subject matter and just rolling along with the events.
The film may not be as ingeniously innovative as Scheinert’s “Swiss Army Man,” but it is just as intricate, if not more so, weaving together numerous subplots and obstacles the lead characters have to pitifully try and maneuver around to get out of this jam they’re in. In essence, the film is really a bromance between two guys who complement each other in weirdly instinctive ways, that it’s no wonder Scheinert ends his film with the two of them earnestly performing, completely off-key, of course, Nickelback’s “How You Remind Me.” One doesn’t need to overthink it; Earl and Zeke are best buds because they’re two peas in a pod in a world where normally, they’re discarded outcasts. And the light ‘Dick Long’ shine on these two loveable losers and their friendship, despite all their juvenile inanity, is endearingly warm. [B+]
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