Delayed Reaction: Vincent n Roxxy

Premise: Per IMDB, "A small town loner and a rebellious punk rocker unexpectedly fall in love as they are forced on the run and soon discover violence follows them everywhere."

I decided to use the IMDB description because I find it hilarious. I mean, yes, technically Vincent lives outside the city and doesn't totally fit in, and Roxxy, um, has Tattoos and is played by Zoe Kravitz (sure, punk rock). Violence also does follow them. However, that description is what you come up with if you are a marketing exec and this is thrown on your desk: technically true but not really accurate.

Do you ever have the experience when watching a movie where you keep waiting for a movie to reveal itself...then it ends? This movie feels like a lot of setup then it's just somehow at the climax. To be fair, I think some of that is intentional disorientation. The movie starts with Vincent (Emile Hirsch) rescuing Roxxy (Zoe Kravitz) from trouble in the city, and the whole sequence feels like it's happening an hour into a different movie. We soon find out that Vincent and Roxxy don't know each other. He's a stranger who helped her out (although anyone who has ever seen a movie before knows that it wasn't a chance meeting). He invites her to hang out in his hometown outside of the city. She takes him up on the offer and quickly becomes part of his life.

To be clear, he's not living out in some remote, calm farm town. I'd describe of it as a town that would be filled with white supremacists in a Spike Lee movie. It's that kind of location. Well, eventually, we discover how Vincent and Roxxy are connected, and as far as dark secrets go, it's pretty small. Regardless, Roxxy's trouble in the city finds her and things take a very, very violent turn. It's fairly abrupt and, I'll admit, I lost track of the stakes around then. For some reason, people are dying, I guess because the movie needs a bad guy.

To its credit, when the movie makes the violent turn, it makes some decisions that genuinely surprised me. The POV character changes and characters become expendable a lot earlier than I expected.

Vincent n Roxxy reminds me of movies from a decade earlier like Havoc and Alpha Dog. If you are familiar with those movies, that isn't high praise. Those movies are pretty much excuses for young Hollywood stars to get tattoos and wear dark colors. Weirdly though, I didn't hate Vincent n Roxxy. I just sort of wondered what happened to the last 90 minutes.

Verdict: Strongly Don't Recommend