Neighborhood Watch: Two Damaged Men Chasing a Crime Serve Up a Worthy Life Lesson
By John Kirk
Rating: B+
Dealing with a stranger with mental illness is a challenging scenario, even for the best of us.
Without pre-knowledge of a person’s history, there’s uncertainty in how to react when someone acts in a way outside the “norm.”
That’s why Neighborhood Watch, directed by Duncan Skiles and written by Sean Farley, made me take notice. It suggested that just a bit of patience and understanding for others might be just what we need to better ourselves.
Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Jack Quaid find themselves in sketchy company in Neighborhood Watch.
The story: Simon (Jack Quaid) is an unemployed young man, desperately trying to find a job, while struggling to perceive reality in his battle with mental illness. When he sees a young woman abducted in broad daylight, he is the only witness and he cannot convince the police to help.
He turns to his neighbour, Ed (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), an embittered and forcibly retired security guard, for help. Ed’s intolerance aside, the two manage to create a partnership as they seek to corroborate Simon’s story and find the missing girl.
Neighborhood Watch has a conventional story motif: the unlikely duo who can barely stand each other, team up and despite their own misgivings, in the end discover something about themselves that surpasses their original goal. It may be formulaic in its composition, but there’s comfort in this predictability.
Ed has his own challenges. Being intolerant, misogynistic, and by himself, it’s this loneliness that makes him reach out to help Simon. His intolerance represents a typical way in which mental illness is greeted, adding an extra layer of challenge to the way of those who suffer with this affliction. Ed is the personification of common prejudice.
By the same token, Simon’s symptoms are generically schizophrenic and while his particular type of schizophrenia isn’t identified, his condition clearly gets in the way of his relationships with the police, the people he encounters in his investigation and even his own sister, DeeDee (Malin Akerman). He has a police record for violent behaviour as well as a history of a forced stay at a psychiatric hospital. He has hallucinations, hears voices and clearly is a victim of childhood trauma.
Both of these protagonists are severely flawed and representative of their types, to be sure, but we understand them. We know their flaws and recognize them.
Which is why, when they show the ability to make leaps that surpass their limitations, when they recognize their flaws and struggle to overcome them, we are there cheering them on.
Seeing Simon’s and Ed’s characters develop makes the film not only entertaining, but provides a message of hope. If these two figures can overcome their limitations and mind-sets, then perhaps we can learn something from them as well.
Director, Skiles has said he’s inspired by movies about unexpected friendships, including Doc and Marty in Back to the Future, Moses and Addie in Paper Moon and Miles and Jack in Sideways. In his words, “bittersweet stories about the power of platonic affection just do it for me.”
A large part of that is the way Quaid and Morgan present these characters. Their unexpected friendship is relatable. Their intuitive understanding of how they function is a great part of the film’s success.
In addition, there’s a layer of dark humour that relieves the tension of a certain difficult moment that allows for the audience to further understand what each character is experiencing. We see an innate curiosity at the core of their relationship. The suggestion is that when we try to understand each other, we are comforted to recognize the other person’s humanity.
Neighborhood Watch. Directed by Duncan Skiles. Written by Sean Farley. Stars Jack Quaid, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Malin Ackerman. Will be released in theatres April 25 and can be found on VOD.