For The Boss

A gang of inept mobsters get more than they bargained for when, as a surprise for their boss, they kidnap the guy who has been sleeping with his wife.

 

Lance (Sampson) is a guy who’s just trying to live out his life. He’s got a past that we don’t talk about, but because of that past he’s finding it difficult to obtain gainful employment and that’s putting a strain on his new relationship with Maria (Handley), who just wants to get away on holiday to Mexico. In the pre-titles sequence, we find out that Lance has been kidnapped by a trio of kooks, who, in their wildest and wackiest ways, present themselves to us one by one with the most ridiculous and adolescent dialogue imaginable.

 

This vein of characterisation continues for the rest of the film, and much like Lance, we just have to get used to the way these idiots interact with one another; comparing their penis sizes, calling each other names, and asking each other if they think they’re funny. Spoiler alert – they’re not. The plot runs in very much the way you would expect, with the incompetence of the idiots giving Lance enough window for escape, and then the rounding up of the story with Lance despatching each goon in turn as the narrative unfolds.

 

Towards the end there’s some attempt at schmaltz, with the henchmen displaying worrying amounts of inner turmoil, but generally everything in For The Boss is aimed at being as silly as possible while also getting to say a few dirty words in the process. Most of the scenes which make up the film are populated by really bad comedy sketch tropes that have been tried a million times in other places, and better. The insecure gangster, the dumb but highly erudite girlfriend, the Mob Boss with a heart, and all the other cut-to and sight gags that go along with them, are delightfully trotted out one-by-one, although at least with a hint of irony thrown in.

 

Thankfully, the cinematography from Jason Bergen makes everything on screen look professional, even if what we’re actually watching is nonsense. For The Boss could, for all intents and purposes, be a studio movie because it looks so good. The acting, too, is of a very high standard. From the idiot grunts of Sal (Rathe), Micheal (Munden) and Phil (Biskey), right through to the Boss himself (Jones), everyone is sold on their character and giving their all to the performance. While this doesn’t really help in most scenes, when the dialogue is so off-putting that it’s hard to stay invested in anything being said, every frame with Shelby Handley as Maria in it is absolute gold. She embodies the ditzy moll perfectly and delivers some of the best lines in the movie with such stone-cold precision that it almost raises a smile.

 

There’s a strong feeling that what writer/director, Xavier St-Roch and the rest of the team at Friendly Fire Productions were aiming at, was something along the lines of characterful gangsters, as in the likes of In Order Of Disappearance (2014), and current Oscar darling, Anora (2024), but what they’ve ended up with is way off the mark. There’s no real joy in anything coming across in the dialogue, and any actual emotion that is aimed for is obliterated by the sheer silliness of everything else in the scenario. In terms of the production, it’s top marks for the team, but there’s plenty of room for improvement in the writer’s room if future projects from the production house are going to continue to try to be full length features.