Vanessa Kirby Breaks Bad in Muddled Netflix Thriller Night Always Comes

At the very least, you can say this for new Netflix crime thriller Night Always Comes: Being gifted with Vanessa Kirby as your every-shot-of-the-movie star is certainly a solid foundation to build from. The English actress is one of the strongest leading ladies in Hollywood today, capable of both dramatic crescendos and popcorn entertainment as she plays high-profile roles in the likes of Mission: Impossible and The Fantastic Four: First Steps. A “one crazy night” crime thriller built around such an esteemed talent doesn’t seem like a bad idea, even though it will forever be difficult for a woman as famously, classically beautiful as Kirby to portray someone we’re told is viewed by everyone in her orbit as a disaster one step removed from the gutter. Although ultimately, asking us to believe that heads wouldn’t be turning as Kirby’s Lynette goes by is among the least of the problems inherent to Night Always Comes, which strains credibility while delivering clumsy attempts at socioeconomic commentary and characters (aside from Kirby) who frequently register as either inconsistent or inscrutable. The film’s star (she was also a producer) acquits herself well, but the screenplay in particular does her no favors.

Lynette has the air of a parentified child, even though like Kirby she’s a mid-30s adult, scraping by with multiple demeaning jobs and a rap sheet that weighs her down like an anchor around her neck. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her acerbic, irresponsible mother Doreen (Jennifer Lason Leigh) and developmentally disabled older brother Kenny (Zack Gottsagen, of The Peanut Butter Falcon), still in the ramshackle childhood home where a deadbeat dad once seemingly exited the equation. Perpetually burning the candle at however many ends are available to her, Lynette hustles (and occasionally escorts) to scrape together enough funding to stave off the threat of eviction from the home, straining to protect her brother in particular, terrified by the prospect that he will become a ward of the state due to the perceived negligence of Doreen and her implied criminal history. Kirby does a fine job of communicating Lynette’s on-edge, feverishly anxious energy, feeling always in a state of semi-panic adjacent to mania as she skitters from one idea to the next. Her guard is perpetually up, but the sheer stress she’s under means she increasingly gives way to impulsiveness.

Doreen, on the other hand, is an immediate narrative problem for Night Always Comes. It’s very unclear what exactly Leigh’s character is trying to accomplish when she scuttles Lynette’s plans to offer a down payment on the house to stave off their creditors, instead buying a brand new car in a rather shockingly caddish display of indifference. Why is Doreen so personally disinterested in Lynette, when the latter is devoting 110% of her energy toward a desperate attempt to provide the family with some stability? Why does she outright refuse to communicate with her daughter in any way? Jennifer Jason Leigh is an actress of inestimable power, particularly in portraying these kinds of abrasive, intimidating or hard-to-know characters, but despite her selfishness being the impetus for the entire plot of Night Always Comes, she’s barely a character in the film proper. She immediately falls out of the story, primarily serving as just an impediment, a reason for Lynette to have to embark on the film’s logline: Raising $25,000 in a single night by calling in all her favors and ultimately breaking bad on the fringes of law-abiding society in Portland’s criminal underground. Leigh returns very late in the game for one final scene meant to give some context to her seeming negligence, but it not only arrives too late to properly make an impression, but also undermines the motive that has been driving Lynette (and the viewer) through the last 108 minutes of runtime. These revelations are perhaps meant to have the viewer challenge Lynette’s protagonist status to some degree, but they mostly serve to invalidate her struggle in a way that is inherently unsatisfying to the audience, trivializing what had been portrayed throughout as a looming, impossible bind the family was facing. The narrative can’t help but feel pointless when you reach over to the ticking clock and simply remove its batteries. Problem solved!

That the film ultimately walks back the seriousness of the threat of poverty that the family is facing speaks to the clumsy way it tackles topics like poverty and criminality in general, as evidenced by the clunky opening radio narration, hammering away on “things sure are terrible these days” sentiment. The screenplay gives Lynette ample opportunity to make mistakes, but then justifies and rationalizes them–she, for instance, automatically assumes with casual racist simplicity that the one black coworker she has at her bartending job will have various useful underworld connections because she heard he “did time,” despite her having no idea of the context of his imprisonment. Rather than call her out on this racist assumption, Night Always Comes instead validates it, because yep, turns out that Cody (Stephen James) actually does know a guy in the same neighborhood who can crack a safe, or fence a stolen Mercedes. James tries to rise above the stereotypes his character is given, right up to the moment that Cody undergoes a heel turn so abrupt that it at first seems like a gag, going from semi-flirtatious with Lynette to threatening and demanding at the drop of a hat, for no other reason than that the screenplay demands it.