COMING TO THEATERS AND VOD! I recently got into a debate about whether Nicholas Maggio’s Mob Land was a Southern mob movie. Well, The Godfather was a character study of Michael Corleone, and Mob Land becomes a character study as well. Let’s get into it.
Shelby Connors (Shiloh Fernandez) is a blue-collar family man with a loving wife, Caroline (Ashley Benson), and daughter, Mila (Tia DiMartino). The problem is that living in the economically depressed South, he struggles to make ends meet.
Ready to get Shelby in trouble is his brother-in-law Trey (Kevin Dillon), who proposes the pair rob a health clinic fronting as a fentanyl dispensary. The clinic is never adequately staffed. So in and out, and they’re rich. At first, Shelby resists because Sheriff Bodie Davis (John Travolta) is a close family friend, and potentially going to jail is not in the plans for his family man.
When Shelby realizes he’ll never survive with his current job prospects, he agrees to the heist. At first, all goes well, but like a good mob movie, things go haywire and fast. The results are two people dead and a high-speed car chase with Bodie in hot pursuit. Managing to ditch Bodie, the pair draws heat from the mob, sending their best enforcer, Clayton (Stephen Dorff), to rectify the situation and remove everyone associated with the heist.
What makes Mob Land so fascinating is the character study of our three leads, Shelby, Bodie, and Clayton, and how a single event changes them over time. Shelby is the loving family man who gives into temptation and is not forced to unspeakable acts as a result.
“…the pair draws heat from the mob, sending their best enforcer…to rectify the situation…”
Clayton is the mob enforcer with a moral compass. He will only kill the guilty. Early on, he dispatches with Trey and then, under threat of harm coming to Caroline and Mila, forces Shelby to do the dirty work he is morally unable to commit.
Bodie is also an interesting character. Mob Land opens with Clayton beating down an employee of a man who owes money to the mob. This act of violence is contrasted with Bodie’s deer hunting trek in the forest. When he’s unable to kill his target cleanly, he must find the deer and mercifully end the innocent creature’s suffering. This scene becomes the guiding force of Bodie for the rest of the film.
OK, maybe Mob Land is not a true mob film but leans toward the noir end of the spectrum. The moral compass (whether lawful good or chaotic evil) is put to the test. Each character’s act of violence is a decision that keeps them either within that line of morality or forces them to cross it…leading to severe ramifications.
What makes this entire film flow so well is its badass cast. John Travolta, Stephen Dorff, Kevin Dillon, and the every man in Shiloh Fernandez. This cast keeps the story grounded as each man is tested throughout the film. Dorff absolutely kills it as Clayton. He’s clearly having fun with not just the violence but in creating such a complex character.
Now add to it the moments of violence indicative of a mob movie, and you have a nice indie crime thriller born from Nicholas Maggio and Rob Healy’s screenplay. The attraction of this top-notch cast had to be the well-defined characters created by Maggio and Healy.
Mob Land comes to theaters and on digital and demand on August 25, 2023.
