Big Gold Brick: Not Even Ace Actors Can Rescue This Lame Duck Comedy
By Karen Gordon
Rating: D
There are some actors I’ll follow anywhere to watch whatever they’re in. Oscar Isaac is one of them. And then there’s Andy Garcia, who is woefully underrated in my opinion. The presence of those two actors is what drew me to the dark indie comedy, Big Gold Brick.
Unfortunately, neither actor can make this film work.
The story centres on Samuel Liston, played by Emory Cohen. He’s just published his first book, Big Gold Brick, a biography of the enigmatic Floyd Deveraux (Garcia). Liston is on a promotional tour for the book, and as he speaks to various interviewers, the story goes into flashbacks to show us what happened between the two men.
Essentially, Liston was failing, unable to pay his rent, and in despair got roaringly drunk. He ended up on a lonely road and decided to end it all by jumping in front of an oncoming car. That car was driven by Deveraux. Liston wakes up in the hospital with a concussion, and Deveraux in the visitor’s chair.
Deveraux has a plan. He says he’s been wanting to write his autobiography. But their fortuitous meeting has given him an idea. He suggests Liston move into his home to recover and use the time to write his biography.
They agree. Liston moves into the guest room and meets the family: Deveraux’s beautiful wife Jacqueline (Meghan Fox), their daughter Lily (Lucy Hale), and their goth-y teenage son Roy (Shiloh Fernandez). Writer and subject meet to do interviews, and hang out a bit, but it’s hard to know if much of anything that Deveraux says is actually true.
In the meantime, Liston, still recovering from his brain injury, has episodes where fantasy and reality merge, some involving a toy Santa that sits on a bookshelf in his room and seems to be talking to him. And often not so nicely.
Isaac shows up around an hour-and-a-half into the film, for about five minutes, as an ultra-wealthy bad guy with an effete British accent, a team of hit men at his disposal, and a life or death proposal for Deveraux. If things weren’t already jumbled enough, more chaos ensues.
This is the feature film debut of writer/director Brian Petsos who has a background in comedy on both sides of the camera. He seems to be aiming for a tone somewhere between the Coen Brothers and Wes Anderson, without success.
No one sets out to make a bad film, but at over two hours, the shot-in-Toronto Big Gold Brick seems like a bunch of ideas that must have looked good on paper, but just didn’t gel. Both Garcia and Isaac are terrific actors, and charismatic as hell. But neither can bring this listless film to life.
Big Gold Brick. Written and directed by Brian Petsos. Starring Emory Cohen, Andy Garcia, Meghan Fox, Lucy Hale, and Oscar Isaac. Available on VOD February 25.