(Muscular Puppy)
Muscular Puppy, 2023. Crime drama. 103 min.
Grade: 3 out of 4
With its hollow bars, late nights, and copious smoking by broken people, Tonic conjures the scent of John Cassavetes as much as it does that of the stale-beer-and-nicotine-residue that permeates long-standing pubs. Sebastian Poe (Billy Blair), a hapless, soused pianist who looks like a walking withdrawal symptom, and probably ten years older than he really is, is getting his ass kicked, after yet another bar gig cancellation that’s forced him to default on some bad debts.
Corrupt cop Terry (Jason Coviello) an unholy fusion of Jason Statham and Peter Stormare DNA, with all the bad temper and psychosis that implies, needs that money from Poe now, but if he can’t have it, there’s another way the luckless musician can make things right. He must go to a certain address, and kill the person he finds there. He must do so without being remotely experienced in acts of violence, and completely sans weapon.
Writer-director Derek Presley based the situation on imagining what he might do if forced into such a movie-ish situation. How would a regular person like him go about committing a professional hit if he absolutely had to, without a convenient movie hero arc to save the day? One hopes Presley has a better life than Poe, who takes care of his cancer-stricken sister (Lori Petty) even as he periodically swipes her meds for himself – all illegally procured by Terry, of course. The director has done his job, though – you probably wouldn’t like Poe if you met him on the street, but you feel his stress.
Like Adam Sandler’s eternally hustling Howard in Uncut Gems, Poe manages to constantly makes things worse for himself, staking everything on flimsy longshots and wasting every ounce of goodwill anyone’s willing to provide for him. Strangely, he remains uncynical enough to still put his trust in others, which might be more of a virtue if he didn’t consistently place his faith in human red flags.
The “One Bad Night” subgenre often rises and falls on its location, and in this case, that’s Deep Ellum, a historic arts district in Dallas that doesn’t fit any of cinema’s usual cliches about Texas. Brightly graffiti’d walls mix with bar and club-laden streets and run-down, suburban Southern shacks. There’s a distinctiveness to it that sets a tone, but a universality, if you’ve lived it, to the sense of being drunk and about in a strange city. The dark provides comfort to both lightning bugs and cockroaches, real and metaphorical, and allows the imagination to sense stories at play in the strange corners. Presley has, for the most part, given us a good one.
It’s not entirely without bumps – at one point late in the journey, Poe goes home to his sister, then ventures out again, which has the effect of breaking the narrative tension. Perhaps some viewers might need that; for me, it felt as misplaced and dissonant as the French plantation scene in Apocalypse Now. There’s also a key moment early on where Presley’s sound mix lets him down, at least on the screening copy. As an in-story TV news broadcast spouts essential exposition, both Blair and Petty talk over it in ways that render all three talkers an auditory scramble.
Then there’s a monologue for Poe that, in a higher profile movie, might be called his “Oscar speech.” It’s unnecessary and a bit out of character, but if it pays off in festival acting awards from judges who think more is better, perhaps it works. It comes during a discussion with an escort about whether or not the world’s inherently terrible, or simply beautiful with flawed people in it. The subtle, dark punchline at the end, which seems to settle the issue, works more effectively than Poe’s uncharacteristic outburst.
These are minor off-notes in an otherwise compelling opus, much like the handful a drunken Poe might toss off at the wrong piano. Perhaps it’s deliberate narrative irony, and if so, Presley’s even savvier than he seems. He’s definitely smart enough to end things in a way that doesn’t feel like a thousand other movies, but works completely for the vibe he’s created. With the help of performances from a cast who are consistently game, none too vain, and obviously eager to prove their chops to a filmmaker who deserves it, the writer-director gives us a night on the town that won’t soon be forgotten.