LaRoya first success
Before its release in French cinemas onwards April 17, 2024black comedy LaRoy by Shane Atkinson was the highlight of the 2023 Deauville Film Festival. It emerged crowned with a prestigious hat-trick: Grand Jury Prize, Audience Award and Critics Award. It was therefore written that we would see him again shortly: Shane Atkinson was present at Reims Polar 2024 to open it with LaRoy. Out of competition, logically, after its foray into Deauville, because it would otherwise have influenced the competition of this 4th International Crime Film Festival.
With LaRoyhis first feature film after two notable shorts, Shane Atkinson has made a film like the ones he loves, a film with a first crime and a detective, set in an imaginary Texan town, between reality and fantasy that we find ourselves in: dust , dry sun and dark nights, empty streets with motels whose neon lights crackle and the paint is peeling.
Here, in LaRoy, Ray, a lovable loser betrayed by his ex-beauty queen wife, is ready to shoot himself in the head when he is mistaken for a hitman. A gun in one hand, the contract money in the other, he will then put his finger on a dramatic mechanism that is as violent as it is fun.
An exceptional cast for a raw drama
Before this presentation of Ray, played by an excellent John Magaro, and his sidekick the amateur detective Skip, equally excellent Steve Zahn, Shane Atkinson wrote and directed a tasty introduction, where we discover the real hitman, Harry. Dylan Baker’s opportunity to remind us, with this portrait of a rigorous and psychopathic killer, how brilliant and underused an actor he is. All cynicism and irony, playing in the shadows of a car’s interior, this introduction gives two important warnings: don’t trust appearances and don’t be clever. And at the same time he declares his love for the darkness and moral ambiguity of the so-called detective cinema.
Shane Atkinson loves his characters, from the most useless to the most active. The ones we shoot in the foreground and the ones we only keep the outline of. Skip and Ray, two losers whose association is forced by Skip, are as funny as they are desperate in the clown duo’s highly successful exercise. Ray shows his discomfort and apparent weakness as Skip gains in recklessness and extravagance as the stakes of the intrigue become more serious. Around them, the supporting characters are equally well looked after by Shane Atkinson, special mention for Dylan Baker as well as Megan Stevenson and Matthew Del Negro, Ray’s wife and brother respectively, all stupidity and meanness.
A human comedy like the Coen brothers
LaRoy it is part of a genre influenced by the cinema of the Coen brothers, with which it maintains a kinship Blood for blood AND Fargo. The genius of the Coen brothers lies in being able to draw from the almost banal mediocrity of situations that develop heights of vision and metaphysical sensations. LaRoy it fails, or only in a flash, at the end of the dramatic mechanism that ends up laying bare this human comedy to finally reveal the profound humanity of its protagonists.
But from this prestigious influence, LaRoy above all, it successfully takes on the flavor of “average” characters confronted with real “Evil” and with the absurdity of situations which sufficiently dilutes their violence and sadness. So we laugh a lot, and we also end up getting emotional when Ray, as if he’s tired of his perpetual time behind the action, finally takes matters into his own hands. In this moment, still determined to save the one who doesn’t love him, Skip rediscovers his friend, and he himself takes on a new dimension for Ray.
Infidelity, murders, scams, friendship: many threads that Shane Atkinson unravels with a consummate art of tragicomedy to make LaRoy a perfectly crafted dark and funny thriller. LaRoy it’s entertainment not to be missed, a declaration of love for crime cinema, and above all a magnificent promise for the future.
LaRoy by Shane Atkinson, in theaters from April 17, 2024. Above is the trailer. Find all our trailers here.
Source: Cine Serie
Ray Ortiz is a journalist at Gossipify, known for his coverage of trending news and current events. He is committed to providing readers with accurate and unbiased reporting, and is respected for his ability to keep readers informed on the latest news and issues.
