Lightyear Entertainment: Randy & the Mob (2007) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of Lightyear Entertainment

Just a few years following the release of his 2001 Academy Award winning short film The Accountant, Ray McKinnon mounted his first feature film effort Chrystal in 2004 starring Billy Bob Thornton and McKinnon’s wife and co-producer Lisa Blount.  A hard hitting Southern Gothic drama co-starring McKinnon, Walton Goggins, David Lynch regulars Grace Zabriskie and Harry Dean Stanton and Eddie King, it was an award winner for Lisa Blount for Best Actress at the Stockholm Film Festival but proved to be a strain on the director and his producing partners.  

Wanting to go back and do something much lighter but still distinctly Southern, McKinnon and his creative team in 2007 opted for an endearing PG rated screwball comedy entitled Randy & the Mob: a caper flick of sorts where Goggins gets to play the weird mysterious visitor ala The Accountant co-starring Bill Nunn, Brent Briscoe and even Burt Reynolds.  A small movie largely shot in Atlanta, Georgia, the endearing caper flick which won the Audience Choice Award at the Nashville Film Festival and now via Lightyear Entertainment comes to Blu-ray disc for the first time.

 
Randy Pearson (Ray McKinnon) is a business entrepreneur who can’t catch a break and is knee deep in debt to the mob after a scheme to preserve his gas station business goes belly up.  Seeking help from his gay identical twin brother Cecil (McKinnon in dual roles) and his carpal-tunneled suffering baton-instructing wife Charlotte (Lisa Blount), advice from gas station manager Wardlowe (Bill Nunn) while fending off the ongoing antagonism from Officer Griff Postell (Brent Briscoe), things don’t seem to be working in Randy’s favor.  

That is until Tino Armani, a strange robotic speaking prophet who may or may not have ties to the mob, makes an unlikely appearance half-naked under Randy’s truck.  At first the guy seems weird and ingratiating, but very quickly his penchant for high fashion, clog dancing and fine cooking wins the hearts and minds of the townsfolk, quickly becoming a pillar of the community.  Even Randy’s own son starts to like him.  Still, Randy’s debts haven’t gone away and eventually the mob will come back knocking on his doorstep.

 
Co-starring Paul Ben-Victor playing a mobster again ala Houseguest and The Irishman, Sling Blade and A Simple Plan actor Brent Briscoe and recent Oppenheimer actor Tim DeKay, Randy & the Mob is a lovely, charming and occasionally really funny Southern Gothic yarn.  Again switching roles with McKinnon as the normal guy while Goggins gets to be the strange visitor with a peculiar particular manner of speech, the film features a gentle natured and playful Southern fried score by future Napoleon Dynamite composer John Swihart and Earthy, organic and rich cinematography by John Wick cameraman Jonathan Sela.  A lighthearted ensemble romp that keeps you engaged but doesn’t tug too heavily at the emotional weathers like his previous film Chrystal, it went under the radars of many but nevertheless now is ripe for attaining cult status as a secondary feature to his Oscar winning short The Accountant. 

 
Slated for Blu-ray disc release in April, Lightyear Entertainment’s Blu-ray disc and digital restoration of Randy & the Mob includes an original in-depth making-of featurette with detailed interviews with Ray McKinnon discussing the project.  For someone who has only heard him affecting his Southern Georgian accent, hearing him speak candidly out of character on the project alongside Lisa Blount and Walton Goggins is an enlightening special feature.  

Also include on the disc, as mentioned in my review for the standalone Blu-ray for The Accountant, is the Oscar-winning short film itself.  Using the same transfer housed on the standalone disc, it begs the question why two releases were done when it could’ve been included as a bonus feature.  Despite the double-dip, fans who want to kill two birds with one stone are inclined to get the Randy & the Mob disc which has everything rather than also buying The Accountant on its own.  They could’ve licensed his previous film Chrystal on Blu-ray instead.  Oh well, both titles are fabulous and highlight one of the film world’s most unique and ubiquitous talents who is finally getting his due on the home video platform.

--Andrew Kotwicki