LaRoy, Texas

Mayhem can be fun. In a movie, I mean, not in real life. There’s a subgenre of crime films in which hapless characters get involved in some kind of crooked business that spins out of control, with multiple unforeseen consequences. These stories can be very funny if done right, and also fascinating, in the sense of “How bad can this get?” the answer of course being very bad. LaRoy, Texas, Shane Atkinson’s first feature as a director, makes something new from the old hired killer premise, not only hilarious and violent, but also touching, which is not easy to pull off.

John Magaro plays Ray, owner of a hardware store in the small west Texas town of LaRoy. His wife, Stacy-Lynn, played by Megan Stevenson, is trying to get a loan in order to open her own beauty shop, but Ray doesn’t have the kind of collateral the bank needs. Stacy-Lynn is nostalgically fixated on her triumph in a county-wide beauty contest years ago, and is clearly unhappy with her marriage to Ray, who is a timid, sad sack kind of guy, depressed about his life without knowing what to do about it.

One day Ray gets a mysterious message to meet someone at a local diner for some “information.” It turns out to be a guy named Skip, who calls himself a private detective. Skip is played by veteran actor Steve Zahn, famous for portraying crazy, foolish, out-in-left-field characters. Skip is wearing a big black cowboy hat, and talks to Ray with the humor and confidence of someone completely sure of himself for no reason at all. From a manila envelope he produces photographs of Stacy Lynn entering and leaving a local motel. Ray did not ask this man to spy on his wife. Skip just hung around the motel trying to get compromising photos of anybody that might lead to getting a client. Ray rebuffs Skip’s attempt to get hired by him, although he does take the photos with him.

Magaro is great at portraying the kind of depression that breaks a man down to almost nothing. Ray still loves his wife, but her contempt for him is hard to ignore. He buys a gun and drives to the motel parking lot. In his car he tries to get up the nerve to shoot himself. A pickup truck suddenly arrives, and a man opens the door to Ray’s care and gets in. He hands Ray a bunch of cash and says that the killing has to happen tomorrow. Totally shocked and confused, Ray won’t agree to anything, but the guy taunting him about not being tough enough makes him decide to go along with it. And thus the mayhem begins.

Clearly this unknown man had made an agreement by phone with a contract killer, and by coincidence has paid the wrong guy. The real killer, played by the reliably creepy Dylan Baker, shows up soon, but too late. That’s as far as I’ll go. The fun is in seeing how the disaster will play out.

Magaro is the movie’s emotional center, but Steve Zahn elevates everything to hilariousness. Skip is a brilliant creation—a complete idiot and loser who makes everything he touches even worse than it was. The film is not cartoonish, though. Atkinson stays just this side of absurdity, so that the comedy seems well earned. And there’s a wounded feeling at the heart of it all—Ray and all the other residents of the town, are just part of a sad, deluded struggle to give some kind of meaning to their vacant lives. LaRoy, Texas is a perfectly dark little gem.