Suicide Kings

365 Films

Entry #97

Suicide Kings (1997)

Directed by Peter O’Fallon

I forget which entry it was for, but do any of you remember when I went off on all the wannabe Pulp Fictions we were burdened with in the wake of that film’s release?  All of the pop-culture skewering, irony-laden, talk-talk-talk shoot fests we had to sit through?  Good, cause you’ll need to brush up on that unfortunate subject matter when diving into Suicide Kings.  This is one of those instances of a movie that blew me away when I was thirteen and now looking back on it, I get the icy hot pang of embarrassment just from the thought that I actually bought into this shit.  This film is a prime example of a work that has been completely swallowed by its own false hype.  Suicide Kings is the story of a group of five bro’s who conspire to kidnap a vicious gangster with the intent of using his connections to the criminal underworld to help them smoke out the thugs who’ve kidnapped the head bro Avery’s sister.  As you can imagine, everything goes horribly awry, especially when the gangster calls in his number one guy Lono to straighten everything out…with a vengeance.  I don’t mean to be so completely dismissive of the thing but it is very hard to take a film seriously that is trying SO hard to be this cool and dangerous itself.  A part of your viewing mind simply wishes to pat the movie on its head and say, “that was very good for a first try, now off to bed.”  But again, I can’t hide from the fact that only sixteen years ago, I was enthralled beyond all recognition.  In trying to piece together why that is, I’ve come to the conclusion that Suicide Kings is one of those movies that’s great if you’ve never seen a movie before.  The unnecessarily complicated plot and flashback structure seem like brilliant innovations if you’ve never seen them executed with even the slightest hint of grace before this.  The Taratino-esque gangsters talking about mundane shit dialogue seems like the way people actually talk.  And perhaps most egregious of all, the bland tragedy of the ending seems like a real punch to the gut if you didn’t see it coming about six movies away.  But perhaps there is something to be said about movies like Suicide Kings, perhaps they give us a soothing sense of comfort.  As cynical as this sounds, perhaps what is most calming is that they give us the sick pleasure of watching dumb people dig themselves into bottomless graves while never complicating our enjoyment with anything remotely resembling a reality-based moral involvement.  We can watch the movie and actively be above it at the same time.  Now before you get all “I’m never reading this bullshit again”, I don’t mean to indicate that this is my preferred attitude towards any movie.  I need to make it perfectly clear that Suicide Kings is definitely not a must see recommendation for anybody I know.  It’s creaky as fuck and doesn’t make a lick of sense.  But maybe in it’s own backwards way, that’s all that it needs to be.  Hell, I talk all this shit about it and not only did I see it in theaters but I bought the fucking thing on DVD as part of my initial collection when we first got a player.  How such a thoroughly forgettable movie has lodged itself into my brain, I obviously can’t even begin to answer here.  And before you say anything else, my convoluted attempt at defending this film might sound like me giving a pass towards something like Pain and Gain.  Before you get any crazy ideas, let me dispel that notion right here and now.  Pain and Gain sucks, see you tomorrow.