“Who’s doing something dumb?” Felix (Felix Munger) says, emerging from a shower to overhear the tail end of a conversation in another room at the start of “Toy Gun Bandit,” his interest piqued not by a potential opportunity to ridicule someone else but perhaps join in on the fun. The reason he was taking the shower in the first place was to dye his hair blue and he’s one to look for trouble wherever he can find it, not ever in a way that would harm anyone else, but to have a good time that always comes with a hint of danger. He finds more of it than he can handle in Rémi St-Michel‘s giddy crime comedy where the Quebec City teen becomes an accomplice to a more experienced criminal in robbing banks and things eventually spiral out of control.
If Felix just wants to have good time, that’s all St-Michel wants to deliver as well with the winning tale of a completely guileless protagonist who finds himself on the wrong side of the law time and again. Just wanting to buy beer for his birthday when he’s underage leads a gas station clerk to abandon their station when Felix comes in a hoodie, a disguise that functions less as intended to hide his age than any potential weapon he could be carrying, and the adrenaline rush of the $218 he takes from the unattended register leads him in every way to befriend Dave (David Beaudoin), who is hanging out at a local bar Felix treats to a round of drinks with the proceeds while remaining unserved himself as a minor. Dave treats him enough like an adult to give him a bump of coke outside and after the two escape some cops that happen to see them, they decide to press their luck a little further when Dave’s wife has been on him to make some more money. Naturally, bank robberies seem like a good idea to both, with Felix needing to hear no more than that the banks are insured.
Of course, this is nowhere near as good an idea in practice as when the two are high, though St-Michel cleverly avoids the obvious adversary when it never feels as if the police are closing in on them, but rather the much more hardened criminals they end up coming into contact with after a night of overpartying at a strip club. The more things get serious, the more Felix wants to check out, though the pressure only rises to keep going. The film is bound to be compared to the last few that the Safdie Brothers made together with its relentless energy and intense handheld camerawork, but St-Michel finds considerable humor in going against the grain in putting someone as pure of heart as Felix and even Dave, to a degree, into such a scuzzy world. The two are joined in their crime spree by Sara, a mumbly recovering addict played with shambling charm by “Falcon Lake” star Sara Monpetit in a scene-stealing turn as the groups Boomhauer, and while it can be somewhat as much of a bummer for audiences as the characters when the mayhem grows a little less carefree, “Toy Gun Bandit” has real fire power.
“Toy Gun Bandit” will screen again at the Toronto Film Festival at the Scotiabank on September 15th at 9 pm.