Mark Reviews Movies: ON THE COUNT OF THREE

On the Count of Three, United Artists Releasing

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 12, 2022

On the Count of Three appears to get to its point and its ending right at the start. Two best friends, Val (Jerrod Carmichael) and Kevin (Christopher Abbott), are pointing pistols at each other—each with point-blank aim at the other's head. They'll count—the timing has to be perfect, Val insists—to three, and that will be it—the end for both of them.

That's the setup for Carmichael's feature directorial debut, written by Ari Katcher and Ryan Welch, and it establishes a certain number of expectations for the story that's to follow. Few of them, as it turns out, end up being accurate.

Here, for example, is a plot that revolves around suicide, as the two best friends arrange a pact to kill each other at the end of the day. However, the story itself isn't quite about that.

Carmichael and the screenwriters show some considerable skill in playing a contradictory game in this film. The subject matter is deadly and dreadfully serious, but for the most part, the tone remains light, unexpectedly encouraging, and surprisingly humorous. This isn't to say that the filmmakers treat mental health issues and suicide in a flippant or dismissive way, though. It's also forthright about those subjects in ways that are discomforting, because Katcher and Welch are so bluntly honest about them, and achingly empathetic.

This is a comedy, to be sure, but on a fundamental level, it knows that these characters, their struggles, and their plan to share an end aren't jokes. Everything surrounding those elements is fair game, though, and watching the filmmakers devise and uncover the tonal and narrative balance within that philosophy is to witness a bold high-wire act of storytelling.

After the shock of the flash-forward prologue (A smart use of the gimmick, since it catches our attention, especially when we only hear one gunshot against a black screen, and doesn't jump too far ahead), we're properly introduced to Val and Kevin a few hours earlier. Val ignores calls from a woman who turns out to be his—possibly former, as we eventually learn—girlfriend, is stuck in a job he hates, and attempts to strangle himself with his belt in the employee restroom, before a co-worker, loudly and ironically singing a peppy country song about what a good day it is to be alive, interrupts him. The joke here is literally outside purview of Val and his attempted act, just as an example of how the humor here functions without belittling or trivializing matters.

Meanwhile, Kevin is being held in a state psychiatric institution, following a suicide attempt a few days prior. He tries to talk and charm his way out of the place, but failing that, Kevin unleashes a speech of pointed despair and self-hatred. In the unthinking speed of his monologue, Kevin ends up insulting the psychiatrist, and his instant regret shows both some of the nature of depression and the precise, nuanced skill of Abbott's performance. The actor plays Kevin as an inherently thoughtful and compassionate person, whose negative thinking has become pernicious to and reflexive within him.

Val breaks his best friend out of the institution and tells Kevin that he wants to die, too, bringing us to that prologue. At the last moment, Kevin stops the plan, saying that he wants one final day to do anything and everything he wants to. Part of those plans eventually involve the psychiatrist (played by Henry Winkler) whom Kevin rightly blames for a good number of his problems—although not all of them, because the film is intelligent and honest about its portrayal of depression.

The one-last-day premise, of course, means that a good section of this story isn't about the end of life or depression, although Kevin offers an even more direct description to Val about how and why he decided to die by suicide—and still wants or, more accurately, feels compelled to do so. In establishing that so plainly and in such a straightforward manner, the filmmakers don't create any illusions of a "cure" through a single day.

The two have fun (The two go to the dirt bike track that occupied so much of their younger years), obtain catharsis (Kevin's plans for the doctor and Val's confrontation with his abusive father, played by J.B. Smoove), try to set things right (Val eventually does re-connect with his girlfriend, played by Tiffany Haddish), and bond together as friends. That last part, by the way, is the real heart of this film, and the easy rapport and connection between Carmichael and Abbott feels deeply authentic.

There's some encouragement in the fact that, at least for Val, this day might set him in a direction toward mental health. The underlying optimism of that, along with the warm and affectionate depiction of this friendship, does help in allowing for the comedy of these misadventures to emerge.

There's also little denying, though, that Katcher and Welch have more or less written themselves into a corner with this premise. A climactic chase sequence only serves to highlight that they're delaying the inevitable. In reducing the narrative and emotional climax to an action sequence, the filmmakers show they're definitely not prepared to grapple with the consequences or the very concept of the story's conclusion being portrayed as an inevitability.

Even so, On the Count of Three mostly pulls off a difficult trick. It's serious and sincere in the subjects that deserve such treatment, and in being that frank and authentic about what matters, the film earns the ability to find and joke about the absurdities along the edges.

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