American Murderer | Movie Review
Ryan Phillippe in American Murderer
Continental Grift: Gentile Presents True Crime Portrait of a Man Most Wanted
By Nicholas Bell | Published on December 21, 2022
For his directorial debut, American Murderer, Matthew Gentile takes us back to the murky prestige of the mid-2000s, when a two-bit con man named Jason Derek Brown landed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List thanks to alleged circumstances, which justify the title of the film. Though Brown is still at large, he fell off the infamous list in 2022, and Gentile’s film aims to paint a portrait of a homegrown narcissist whose penchant for manipulation and antiauthoritarianism eventually sailed him past the point of no return. A surprisingly well curated ensemble cast is led by the vibrant Tom Pelphrey, who so expertly conveys the energy of a blond-frosted modern day charlatan you’ll spend most of the film wondering if something as egregiously gruesome as murder will actually occur. Told in non-linear fashion and styled like a hybrid law enforcement procedural mixed with flashback reenactments a la Unsolved Mysteries, there’s a lot of impressive narrative staging, especially for a first time film, even when it tonally resists being the fodder designed for true-crime enthusiasts. Rather, it’s mostly a melancholic character study in the vein of Ryan Murphy’s stable of anti-heroes, those whose unstable natures are actually nurtured and sustained by the ambivalence and callousness of others.
Jason Derek Brown (Pelphrey) spent most of his early thirties passing himself off as a wealthy entrepreneur, boldly lying about the success of his business as a golf equipment importer, while in reality, he was running check and bank fraud scams. But to his brother (Paul Schneider) and sister (Shantel VanSanten), he was just an irresponsible good time guy who liked to party and maybe told a few too many fibs. On November 29, 2004, he shot and killed an armored car guard in Phoenix, AZ, leading FBI Special Agent Lance Leising (Ryan Philippe) to make it a personal mission to apprehend the alleged criminal. As Leising interviews various intimates of Brown’s past, including an oblivious girlfriend (Idina Menzel), it appears he’d successfully kept the reality of his extreme financial issues at bay to those who knew him as a gallivanting playboy. But by 2007, the FBI would add Brown to their Ten Most Wanted list in an attempt to elevate their manhunt.
Pelphrey seems particularly well-suited for this specific balance of charisma and instability - here a higher functioning savant than his doomed role in the Netflix series Ozark. Gentile juxtaposes Brown’s burgeoning criminality with Philippe’s dogged FBI agent, and it’s a matter-of-fact and efficient way to deliver an awful lot of exposition. Idina Menzel and Shantel VanSanten are appealing, if a bit overly utilized, as the kind women in his life, playing lover and sister respectively, both naive about Brown’s true nature. Others tend to enable him, such as his brother played by Paul Schneider, and Moises Arias as a streetwise cohort who knows when to draw the line with Brown. Kevin Corrigan plays his deadbeat dad in flashbacks, a man who also disappeared from their lives without a trace, the template for the out-of-control swindler his son would become. And then there’s Jacki Weaver, customarily accomplished as the world weary mother who’s discovered exactly what her son is through significant trial and error. Out of all these performances, Philippe tends to pale in comparison, mainly because he has one simple objective and is merely the sobering representative of the law and nothing more.
Unfortunately, Gentle’s title brings to mind a variety of other true-crime titles, from a Casey Anthony expose to American Murder: The Family Next Door, a documentary on Chris Watts, who ruthlessly murdered his wife and two children in 2018, Colorado. Brown is more of an enigmatic sort, his vicious crime seemingly entirely avoidable, and therefore perplexing, even as Gentile leads us through the potential motions, which led to him ruthlessly gunning down an armored car guard for what amounted to petty cash. But Gentile mines the most interesting part of the scenario, the lengths such an individual went through to fool his way through life while still developing relationships with people who remembered him fondly. What would have strengthened the film’s energies is an equally vibrant characterization from Philippe, who has nowhere to go beyond stiff-lipped judgment and perfunctory narrative staples. But the film really feels like Pelphrey’s playground as a man whose crimes are unfortunately commonplace but who received unprecedented scrutiny from those determined to bring him to justice.
★★★☆☆