The Bag Man

The Bag Man

There is a kind of darkness that is profound and powerful. Then there’s the other type, where you can hardly see what’s going on. “The Bag Man”, directed by rookie director David Grovic, falls into this latter category of darkness. If nothing else, it is worth watching “The Bag Man” just to develop a greater appreciation for lighting designers in the 1940s and 1950s who filled those noir films with creeping shadows which created an almost tangible sense of impending doom while still managing to keep things clear.

They must have had more than one light fixture available because this movie looks like they didn’t have enough lights to get the effects they wanted. But that isn’t all; Acting? Fine. Stock story? Stock stories are fine! The script (co-written by Grovic & Paul Conway) is too clever for itself though it tries hard not to be but lets out an impression of being very pleased with itself.

Jack (John Cusack) is a hired gun on the run from his shady past involving an ex-wife killed after they fought about her husband’s job; Dragna (Robert De Niro), a heavy who hires him to transport a mysterious black leather bag for him, is played by Robert De Niro. Jack has been told not to look inside it repeatedly over time: retrieve the bag and wait in Room 13 at some motel until further instructions come through simple enough right? Things go south immediately as always but things get worse when you realize this particular motel happens to be America’s creepiest one ever built! Crispin Glover plays its wheelchair bound paranoid owner with shades of Psycho thrown here and there he even has himself living amongst violent misfits such as leggy blue-wigged hooker Rivka (Rebecca Da Costa), a Serbian-Roma dwarf in tracksuit or patch-eyed pimp.

Rivka latches herself onto Jack, hiding in his room from the dwarf and her pimp who threaten terrible things will happen when they find her. Throughout the movie violence against Rivka serves as motivation for several different plot points which makes it quite distasteful overall. Later on during questioning at a creepy police station where Jack was taken along with mostly naked Rivka lying nearby while one cop teases her panties using baton threateningly Sheriff says: “If you send us on some kind wild goose chase we will take liberties girl.” There seems no urgency or forward movement within this script since lines are repeated continuously giving off an impression that writer(s) were just spinning their wheels trying hard but failing miserably at any sort real creativity whatsoever!

Robert De Niro plays Dragna, a dude in plaid jackets and thick glasses with his grey hair styled in a swoopy high pompadour. He seems mild-mannered, confesses he wanted to go into “academia,” but we know he is capable of violence; we see it early on. He courts Jack for the job by taking him for a flight in a gleaming private jet, carefully cutting up his food to show Jack what he wants him to do: The broccoli is the money, the potato is the bag, etc. “I’m a connoisseur of the unexpected but I don’t like surprises,” Dragna says. Robert De Niro has fun with silly lines like that which is really the only way to play them undercutting and underplaying even more ridiculous ones. Thus Dragna comes off as genuinely loopy, urging Jack to read Hermann Hesse’s “Magister Ludi” before taking the job and later asking him if he has read it. The book might help Jack understand the game. Because it’s all a game, after all.

And maybe that’s the problem. “The Bag Man” feels like a game. The stakes are seemingly high but not really so much. Will Jack look in the bag? What do you think? Will Rivka turn out to be more than she says she is? What do you think? Even the big reveals about the bag and about Rivka are handled so cliched that they lack any gasp of understanding whatsoever Keyser Söze or otherwise when they happen. We’ve seen it coming. We’ve seen it before.

Watch The Bag Man For Free On Gomovies.