Review of Laugh Killer Laugh (2015) by Quincytheodore — 04 Jun 2015

Ambitious, but ultimately lackluster and inaccessible dark comedy. There have been many movies which utilizes dark theme of crime cynically, even amongst them Laugh Killer Laugh is one of the quirkiest. It takes so much liberty on presenting the dark narrative, it ends up dry and incoherent. The most notable anomalies are the exhausting script and the rigid lead character which frankly repels the audience's sympathy.

This is the story of Frank Stone, a gangster in lamentation. He wanders unemotionally at times, barely uttering words for the majority of the movie. Meanwhile, his colleague narrates the story with too much crude delivery, it becomes less audience friendly. It uses plenty of self-awareness about the genre and deliberately makes fun of it, half of the plot is Frank attending writing class as a sort of realism commentary.

However, it's done with tiresome dialogues resembling drunken banter. Heck, some of these are actually drunken banters. They talk in cryptic, brash and repetitive manner, occasionally to themselves and even the audience. The screenplay seems forced, and despite the ambitious take on the gritty subject, the movie feels detached. It demands patience from audience since it takes quite a while to build up and event then it’s littered with inconsistent narrative.

Acting and cinematography are done to emulate real life. The shots are all taken in diagonal claustrophobic angle and most of the scenes have heavy 80s action movie atmosphere. Unfortunately, the characters are either highly exaggerated or extremely cliché. It also displays incredibly gory scene out of nowhere, which is far from appealing.

While it tries to deliver cynicism on crime element, the bizarre script and unsympathetic characters will deter casual viewers and genre fans alike.