There isn’t the most sound reasoning at play when Johnny (Chase Williamson) pitches Faye (Angela Trimbur) on robbing a poker game in “Crooks,” emphasizing that the players are all “real deal, heavy hitting gangsters” to suggest the size of the score will be rewarding, though somehow conveniently ignoring that the payback could be brutal. It’s the kind of act first, damn the consequences mentality that eventually comes to define the latest film from Mickey Keating, though Johnny faces the music almost immediately, which is fitting when he has to try to lure away Faye from her second life as a nightclub singer after the two used to do these kind of jobs on the regular. Ironically, it’s the robbery, placed upfront, that looks glamorous as it unfolds in slow motion and bathed in color rather than when Faye takes the stage and heckled by drunkards in black-and-white.
As a genre exercise, “Crooks” is satisfying as a devil may care thriller where the body count piles up pretty quick and at 76 minutes hearkens back to the tidy noirs of the 1930s and ‘40s where action takes precedence over mystery, but as is usually the case with Keating, there’s something interesting going on underneath when the film could be construed as a perverse showbiz tale where only the most ruthless survive and most put away their true passion when there’s no path to making it. That’s certainly true in the case of Faye, who isn’t easily fazed on stage with the steely resolve she’s built up pulling off heists, yet it’s a tougher business at least in terms of competition and after her boss dismisses her for being rude in response to the hecklers, she is open to hearing Johnny out, particularly when it turns out she has a boyfriend back home who could use some help paying off his family’s debts. You already know she’s successfully brought home the bag full of cash from the game by the time Keating brings things back around from the film’s opening scene of the heist, but the real cost sets in as she’s forced back into her old life of dealing with thugs, having heard that a notorious heavy known as the Ghost (Keith Kupferer) has been directed her way by Bobby (Frank V. Ross), the operator of the poker game (Frank V. Ross).
It’s telling that The Ghost kills Bobby immediately after getting his instructions, not only of his character — he already walks around dressed like an undertaker and it’s no surprise when asked for his coffee order that he takes it black — but that of the film itself when it takes no prisoners and follows the money rather than any one person. The stolen cash spends the most time in Faye’s possession as she tries to arrange a payment to her boyfriend’s debtors as she’s also plotting an escape from town, leading her to Big Ed’s Diner out on a road that’s seemingly leads to nowhere, and upon finding its one employee Blanche (Melora Waters), charged with running the place 24/7 when Big Ed himself is said to be away fishing, the film comes into focus when both turn out to be entertainers with Blanche languishing behind the counter when what she always dreamed of was acting. Keating makes a shrewd observation when she gets that opportunity, though it’s only for a relatively small audience as she has reason to not to tell Faye the entire truth as she’s making small talk with her and certainly not with the cops that eventually come around.
Keating gives Trimbur and Waters both a chance to shine, sliding nicely into roles where their underappreciated talent comes to the fore when that’s been true of their careers in general, and as the film shape shifts a bit, nodding to plenty of other films with its aesthetic choices, its music cues from spaghetti westerns and even within its plot when visiting a porn set (with a skeezy producer played by Joe Swanberg), the difficulty there is for anyone to be a right fit when survival demands the versatility to be at peak performance throughout is inventively brought to the surface, envisioning all those who are so quickly and easily picked off just not up to snuff. If you’re good enough, you can get away with murder in “Crooks,” and often the film is.
“Crooks” does not yet have U.S. distribution.