JOHNNY & CLYDE - Mark Reviews Movies

Johnny & Clyde, Screen Media Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 4, 2023

With its cast of amorally murderous players, Johnny & Clyde seems set on trying to offend. The most offensive thing about co-writer/director Tom DeNucci's movie, though, is its abject incompetence as an attempted piece of storytelling.

The movie is a mess in ways that run deeper and go beyond its budgetary limitations, which are considerable and obvious. That's no excuse for DeNucci's inability to stage a scene, direct his actors, establish any kind of firm tone, or juggle the disparate genre elements with which he and co-screenwriter Nick Principe have decided to further weigh down this material. A basic strategy for storytelling is that a movie should decide what it's going to be and be about before it even thinks about trying to be and be about as much as possible.

Such a concept is certainly not the philosophy here. First, we meet Alana Hart (Megan Fox), who runs a casino in Rhode Island (The characters have to repeatedly tell us this, since the filmmakers apparently didn't even consider finding or paying for some stock footage of a gambling establishment to incorporate into the movie). She's confronted by a reporter (played by Vanessa Angel) who's writing a story about rumors that Alana controls some undead demonic slasher.

All of this being thrown at us from the beginning simply raises far too many questions of logic and believability within the first five minutes of a plot, before we meet our protagonists or have any clue as to what this story actually is. Alana's first response of attempting to bribe the journalist at least makes a bit more sense than what she actually does to stop the story, which would probably be laughed at if any serious publication ran it, from spreading.

The actual plot revolves around traveling serial killers and lovers Johnny (Avan Jogia) and Clyde (Ajani Russell), who are returning home to Rhode Island, presumably after another robbery-and-murdering spree. They've been at it for years, apparently, if their reputation, their fame, and the ruined life and career of former Sheriff Lock (Armen Garo), whose daughter the couple tortured and killed, are to be believed. None of that makes much sense, since the two are so brazen in what we see of their crimes (which isn't much, because apparently the budget was too tight for extras for the couple to shoot at). One supposes DeNucci's decision to refer to this story as some kind of twisted fairy tale is meant to hand-wave away how unlikely all of this is.

After the pair rob a mostly empty armored truck operated by Alana's casino, Johnny and Clyde learn of a secret vault where Alana's private stash of cash is held, so they enlist the aid of a suicidal strongman called the Butcher (Principe), an explosives expert nicknamed the Baker (Charles W Harris III), and a psychopathic murderer called Candlestick (Robert LaSardo). The joke here is that all of these characters are morally challenged to some degree. For example, we meet Candlestick torturing a trio of men, having killed one by way of evisceration, whom he suspects of stealing his newspaper.

These characters are so dull and the gags are so forced that the quintet achieves a status akin to anti-anti-heroes. The movie wants us to root for or be entertained by them, in spite of their deplorable personalities and horrific actions, but they're vacuums of charm, humor, or any quality that might make them likeable. Beyond that, the performances are mostly stale and unconvincing, meaning it's difficult to work up any negative emotions toward these characters, too.

The rest of the movie has the team robbing the casino, evading a vengeful Lock, and dealing with that undead monster, brought to this realm by a colonial Satanist cult and clearly where DeNucci put most of the project's money. It looks fine and a bit creepy, with its cloaked skull and digital smoke pouring out of its eye sockets, and if the resulting action didn't look like a group of kids playing cops and robbers in the breakroom of a parent's workplace, there might have been something to this ridiculous concept.

That the movie looks cheap isn't the real problem. It's that Johnny & Clyde embodies a broader concept of cheapness—from the haphazard nature of the plot, to the lazy performances, to the herky-jerky editing, to neon lighting serving as a "style."

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