Mark Reviews Movies: THE DEATH OF DICK LONG

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 26, 2019

Whatever you might be expecting as the story of The Death of Dick Long unfolds, you probably will not be expecting the major revelation that comes to light around the halfway point. For that first half, this is a film that keeps us on our toes, both in terms of the plot and our moral reaction to what's happening, as two men try to cover up their knowledge of the particularly gruesome death of one of their friends.

Once the reason for the death is revealed, though, screenwriter Billy Chew and director Daniel Scheinert embark on a tonal high-wire act—without a net and without a harness, but with a clear intention of purpose. They want us to laugh. Then they want us to feel bad about laughing, before making us wonder why we haven't been laughing this whole time.

The film, which begins as a comedic thriller about a couple of thoroughly incompetent criminal bunglers, becomes a bold experiment in content vs. form. Here, once the cause of death is stated, the content is patently absurd, but Scheinert himself and the actors on screen play the material with straight faces (save for a pair of key moments in which the veil of severity is either subtly or quite intentionally lifted—serving as a reminder that the premise is basically a gutter-level joke).

The test, perhaps, is for the filmmakers to see if they can make us care about this scenario and these characters as much more than the joke that's at the story's core. Watching the film with that in mind and realizing that we're genuinely invested in what might befall these characters, it's a pretty impressive that Scheinert actually passes this self-imposed test.

The two friends are Zeke (Michael Abbott Jr.) and Earl (Andre Hyland), a couple of Alabama men whose lives are pretty decent. Zeke is married Lydia (Virginia Newcomb), and the couple has an intelligent and curious daughter named Cynthia (Poppy Cunningham), whose intelligence and curiosity become a major obstacle for her dad. Earl has a steady job at a warehouse and lives in a double-wide trailer, where he has a little flirtatious thing going on with a kind-hearted neighbor (played by Sunita Mani).

These long-time buddies are also in a band with their other pal, the eponymous Dick Long (played very briefly, obviously, by Scheinert), whose name alone should be a bit of a sign that there's some kind of gag waiting for us at some point in this film (There's even an exchange about the nickname later on that quickly turns into a joke). After band practice, the friends decide to "get weird."

After a montage of shenanigans, Zeke and Earl are driving Dick, bleeding all over the backseat, to the hospital. They drop their buddy outside the emergency room entrance and run.

Zeke tries to go about his daily routine (made impossible by all that blood where his daughter has to sit on the way to school), while Earl packs up his things to skip town. Soon enough, they learn that Dick has died, and the local police—mainly Sheriff Spenser (Janelle Cochrane) and Officer Dudley (Sarah Baker)—believe they have a nasty case of murder on their hands.

The first half of the film already possesses a significant challenge, in that it wants us to sympathize with Zeke and Early, in spite of the fact that they might be directly responsible for Dick's death and despite their gross incompetence. What's amusing is that the latter actually undermines the suspicion of the former.

These two men are terrible liars (Zeke's chance encounter with Dudley and another meeting with both cops show that he'd be a great source of income at a poker game). They're awful planners ("I guess we didn't totally think that one through," Earl says of one scheme, in a complete understatement) and seemingly unaware of the concept of foresight (Zeke gives away evidence of being with Dick on the night of his death with little hesitation). Zeke and Early probably couldn't kill someone, even if they wanted to. If anything, we almost want to sympathize with them for how easily they become the butts of this running gag about their ineptitude.

The turn, without giving it away, comes in one sequence, which cross-cuts between the police learning about DNA evidence and Zeke coming to grips with the idea that he's going to have to tell his wife what happened. Lydia's reaction is the tipping point to the film, and Newcomb conveys the evolution of her character's response with uncanny precision. Watch the initial moment of realization—how she almost seems to be holding back an eruption of laughter, holding a finger to her mouth to cover a smile—before each and every implication of what happened to Dick (and what that means about her husband) crosses her mind. Scheinert basically puts the entire tonal experiment at Newcomb's feet in that scene, allowing us to laugh along with her near-chuckle, before forcing us to realize that there's a genuine, human story behind the twisted punch line.

The rest of the film keeps up Zeke's attempts to keep the cops off his trail, as well as his continued ineffectiveness in doing so, but the stakes have been elevated on multiple levels. Zeke has to deal with a suddenly dissolving marriage. He has to lie to Dick's wife (played by Jess Weixler). He has to maintain an already-shaky story with the police, and all the while, he has to confront the sadness and loneliness of what the truth of Dick's death means about his own life. There's all of that, yes, but the real stakes of The Death of Dick Long are in watching Scheinert transform a bad joke into serious drama.

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