Dumb Next Day Air a Bad Package
After marijuana-addled delivery man Leo (Donald Faison) mistakenly drops a package secretly full of cocaine off at their apartment, inept criminals Brody (Mike Epps) and Guch (Wood Harris) think they’ve just struck it big. Contacting the former man’s cousin Shavoo (Omari Hardwick), they arrange to sell the drugs to him and his tight-lipped bodyguard (Darius McCrary) for a large chunk of cash.
Donald Faison and Mos Def in Summit Entertainment's Next Day Air
What they don’t realize is that the cocaine was supposed to be delivered across the hall to smalltime gangster Jesus (Cisco Reyes) and his sassy girlfriend Chita (Yasmin Deliz). Worse than that, the man who sent it to them, Mexican drug kingpin Bodega Diablo (Emilio Rivera) knows it’s missing, and he’s not the type of man to take the loss of his product sitting down.
All of them are suddenly on a collision course, the outcome of the inevitable meeting almost certain to change Leo’s life in ways he can’t begin to comprehend. That is, they will if he can live long enough to experience them, and considering the anger (and the bullets) be sent his direction delivery on that front isn’t exactly certain.
Next Day Air is dumb. Completely, totally and almost irredeemably dumb. The script by Blair Cobbs is as cliché ridden and as overly-familiar as they come, ripping off countless other crime thrillers and returning to a Tarantino style of cool that become passé sometime during the late 1990’s. When it focused on its tired storyline it was a movie I just couldn’t wait to come to an end, sitting in my seat about as much fun as a root canal without the anesthetic
But how about when it didn’t focus on the plot and went off into weird tangents all its own? Now that’s another thing entirely. Pieces of the byplay between Hardwick and McCrary are absolutely outstanding, a sequence inside a storage shed particularly strong. Newcomer Deliz also has moments of supreme bliss, a couple of her verbal dressing downs of Reyes funny enough they actually made me giggle out loud. There’s also a great out of left field cameo from the always interesting Mos Def, while Debbie Allen makes a surprise early appearance that momentarily tricked me into thinking I was in for something good.
The thing is, the film isn’t good, not even remotely so. The movie plays like the final 20 minutes of True Romance, all of it lurching along with a tired forgone banality that just about drove me nuts. It doesn’t help that, other than a striking realization on one character’s part, there’s nothing remotely surprising about the outcome. I knew what was going to happen the moment Leo mis-delivered the package, none of what transpired anything close to what I would consider a shock.
Simple fact is, the movie is a fairly ugly abomination with a couple of striking high spots here and there. Video director Benny Boom makes a fairly tepid debut, and any charm or charisma I might have once though Epps possessed vanishes away to just about nothing after this. Long story short, this is a package I don’t think anyone should open, a quick return to sender about the best thing Next Day Air should hope for.
Film Rating: êê (out of 4)
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