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Benicio Del Toro slinks and weaves through Grant Singer ’s debut thriller “Reptile,” but the film struggles to develop a confident personality around him, ultimately coming apart at the seams. Clearly inspired by David Fincher ’s meticulousness—Singer too is a music video vet and has worked with The Weeknd , Skrillex, Sam Smith , and many more—“Reptile” is overly mannered and precious with its details, but its biggest misstep is its failure to understand that procedurals need to get narratively tighter and not just more convoluted. Del Toro always brings it, and this is actually one of his more intriguing performances in a long time, but one consistently wishes that it was in a movie that knew what to do with it.

Will Grady ( Justin Timberlake ) is a Scarborough real estate mogul dating an agent named Summer ( Matilda Lutz ). They flip foreclosures on expensive homes in the area under the watchful eye of Will’s mom, Camille ( Frances Fisher ), and there seems to be some brewing tension in the relationship. One day, Will meets Summer at a house she’s showing and finds her brutally murdered.

The suspects line up quickly for Detective Tom Nichols (Del Toro) and his partner Dan Cleary ( Ato Essandoh ). First, Grady couldn’t be creepier—Timberlake leans way too hard into the slimy silver spoon kid background of the kind of dude who lines up a new girlfriend who looks a lot like his dead one almost immediately. Will is clearly into some shady shit, but he found the body, right? Or did he? Could it be Summer’s soon-to-be ex-husband Sam ( Karl Glusman )? He, too, is sketched as a few cards short of a full deck, introduced on CCTV footage cutting a stranger’s hair so he can turn it into art. Yeah, he’s weird. That’s not it! The cavalcade of creeps on the suspect list also includes Eli Phillips ( Michael Pitt ), a guy whose dad got screwed on a Grady deal. Did he kill Summer to get revenge?

As if that trio of potential murderers isn’t enough, the script by Singer, Benjamin Brewer , and Del Toro himself fills out a massive cast with the people in Tom’s orbit, including his wife Judy (an effective Alicia Silverstone ), who helps him work angles on the case in some of the film’s best scenes. She’s fearless and intellectually engaged in discussing the mystery. She knows and loves Captain Robert Allen ( Eric Bogosian ), Tom’s boss, who is introduced receiving an MS diagnosis. Yes, this is one of those scripts where everyone has an instantly identifiable trait that tries to take a traditional character just a bit left of center. It’s all over-written, exaggerated stuff that only reminds you that you’re in a movie.

Of course, it’s perfectly fine to be aware of a writer’s voice and director’s eye—no one would say someone like Fincher quietly observes—but the problems of “Reptile” comes down to style vs. vision. There’s plenty of style here, but it never feels like anything coheres into an actual vision. The great Mike Gioulakis (“ It Follows ,” “ Split ”) slides his camera through these imposing spaces, but to what end? Does it mean anything? The abundant style of “Reptile” is increasingly hollow as its overlong 134 minutes unfold. “Reptile” tries to hold onto too many things at once and lands none of them, leaving subplots unresolved and characters inconsistent.

And yet, there’s that performance in the center. Del Toro is so good here, capturing a man who has seen it all and just wants a peace that won’t come. He doesn’t overplay trauma or experience; he just allows those elements to influence his body language and the stares from those unforgettable eyes. It’s also a playful performance at times as Tom uses elements of his journey into real estate to influence his home remodel. There are some decent turns in the ensemble—Silverstone, Bogosian, Pitt—but Del Toro is on another level, existing in his own space. A space that belongs in a much better movie. 

This review was filed from the world premiere at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. “Reptile” will be on Netflix on October 6 th .

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

• Benicio Del Toro as Tom Nichols
• Justin Timberlake as Will Grady
• Alicia Silverstone as Judy Nichols
• Michael Pitt as Eli Phillips
• Karl Glusman as Sam Gifford
• Eric Bogosian as Captain Robert Allen
• Frances Fisher as Camille Grady
• Domenick Lombardozzi as Wally
• Owen Teague as Rudi Rackozy
• Matilda Lutz as Summer Elswick
• Victor Rasuk as Officer Peralta
• Sky Ferreira as Renee
• Benicio Del Toro
• Benjamin Brewer
• Grant Singer

Writer (story by)

• Kevin Hickman

Cinematographer

• Mike Gioulakis
• Yair Elazar Glotman

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Reptile Reviews

...way overwritten in terms of character traits, and underwritten in terms of meaningful procedural changes; it’s the kind of film which requires warnings for the unwary; despite the sheen, it’s a time-waster where the end doesn’t justify the means...

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 28, 2024

Benicio Del Toro’s solid lead performance can’t prevent Reptile from being a boring, forgettable procedural.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Jul 12, 2024

Hat tip to Del Toro and company. I like scripts that present a familiar formula in a mystery, and then proceed to have fun with the whodunit.

Full Review | Dec 3, 2023

The script suffers from having an excess of twists executed at a slow pace... [but] the cast never makes it boring. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Dec 1, 2023

Reptile lets all the drama happen off screen with a third act deus ex machina. What could have been a knotty, suburban, coastal noir boils down to a detective story we’ve all seen before.

Full Review | Nov 13, 2023

This is a dreary and somewhat tense crime drama that features a fascinating and compelling lead performance. Del Toro crushes it, but the mystery surrounding his character doesn’t quite come together as intended

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Nov 10, 2023

Excellent performances aren’t enough to salvage this labyrinthine slog saturated with equal parts premeditated diversion and gloomy atmosphere. Not even del Toro can make this work.

Full Review | Oct 26, 2023

Though the film’s plot, including its resolution, is routine, Del Toro and Silverstone keep things interesting. I’d love to see them return as these characters in a more compelling story.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 25, 2023

A pretty effective murder mystery... [Benicio Del Toro] has aged very nicely into this sort of role.

Full Review | Oct 21, 2023

Eventually, Reptile becomes tangled and leaves some of its subplots as loose ends, but Singer’s film is an impressively solid and slimy procedural.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 18, 2023

What begins as a taut crime story ends as anything but. In fact, the finale leaves a couple of questions unanswered.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Oct 13, 2023

Grant Singer puts in plenty of nice touches to stress a seedy environment, and del Toro gets a lot of lived-in aspects to his role to play with, but the film still can’t entirely shed the feel of being a “lesser than” attempt at a strong cinematic effort.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Oct 11, 2023

Reptile, whose name is never fully explained, packs quite a lot into the fast-moving story, though at over two hours, it could have been condensed more.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 11, 2023

It's too convoluted and it feels like a low-rent "True Detective". At the heart of it, it could have been fantastic, but the execution of this film was poorly done.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/10 | Oct 6, 2023

Reptile shines in various aspects, and its flaws can easily be overlooked. Watch it for Del Toro's compelling performance and Fincher's influence (particularly in the first half).

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 6, 2023

Some leaps of logic lessen a well acted, twisty thriller.

Sadly, you still need to stick the landing, and Reptile does a good job of drawing us into the mystery, it just rushes the ending and that feels like a crime.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 6, 2023

Gets points for holding your interest, but loses them for botching the close...it twists itself into such pretzel formations in an attempt to surprise that by the end the ludicrousness has overwhelmed the mood it worked so hard to establish.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Oct 5, 2023

Benicio Del Toro makes this whole thing work. If it were an hour and a half, it'd be a 4-star. At it's current unwieldy length, it's a 3-star. Still a good watch.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 5, 2023

"Reptile" isn't a terrible film. There will be a specific crowd that enjoys it. There are just better offerings out there.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Oct 4, 2023

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Reptile Review: A Twisted Tale of Deception and Discovery

.sadopjpasdmksladnklsandlksadsaipdjhpsiajdpksampdjsajdpoajsdjjjjReptile , directed by Grant Singer in his feature-film directorial debut. The movie offers an intriguing premise with an extremely talented cast, including Benicio del Toro , Justin Timberlake , Alicia Silverstone , Eric Bogosian , and Ato Essandoh . With a screenplay co-written by Singer, Benjamin Brewer, and Benicio del Toro, and a story co-crafted by Singer and Brewer, Reptile promised to be a dark and gripping thriller. However, as the credits rolled, I couldn’t help but feel that the film fell short of its potential. Reptile delivers a narrative that was at times convoluted and lacked the emotional depth it desperately needed.

Reptile opens with the brutal murder of a young real estate agent. This heinous act sets the stage for what should be a gripping noir thriller. Benicio del Toro stars as Detective Tom Nichols, the lead investigator tasked with unraveling the layers of deception surrounding the case. Del Toro’s portrayal of Nichols is one of the film’s strengths. His weathered, world-weary demeanor, coupled with a relentless determination to uncover the truth, adds depth to his character.

Justin Timberlake plays Will Grady, the victim’s boyfriend, and his performance is one of the film’s weaker points. Timberlake struggles to convey the necessary emotional range for his character, leaving the audience disconnected from his plight. Alicia Silverstone, as Judy Nichols, Tom’s wife, adds a sense of domestic tension to the film. The problem is that her character is seriously underutilized, and her chemistry with Del Toro is never fully explored.

Eric Bogosian as Captain Robert Allen, Nichols’s boss, brings a commanding presence to his role, effectively portraying the bureaucratic pressure that often hinders investigations. Ato Essandoh as Detective Dan Cleary, Tom’s partner, delivers a solid performance, but his character’s development is stunted by the film’s convoluted narrative.

The film’s plot is where Reptile starts to unravel. While it promises a gritty and complex mystery, it often meanders through a convoluted narrative that struggles to maintain a coherent thread. The screenplay seems to prioritize style over substance, resulting in a disjointed storytelling experience. The film tries to be clever by interweaving multiple timelines and perspectives, but this approach often leaves the audience feeling disoriented and disconnected from the characters.

Grant Singer’s direction, while visually striking at times, lacks the finesse needed to guide the audience through the labyrinthine plot. The film’s cinematography, courtesy of Mike Gioulakis , is a standout element, with moody lighting and visually arresting compositions. However, the striking visuals can only carry the film so far when the storytelling falters.

One of the film’s major flaws is its inability to establish a clear emotional connection with the audience. While Detective Tom Nichols is a compelling character, his personal journey is overshadowed by the convoluted narrative. The film hints at the dismantling of illusions in Nichols’s life. It hints at them but it fails to fully explore this theme in a meaningful way. As a result, the emotional impact of the film is limited, and the audience is left wanting more depth from the characters.

Additionally, Reptile struggles with pacing issues. The film moves at a slow and deliberate pace. This pacing can work in a noir thriller if it is used to build tension and suspense. However, in this case, the slow pace often feels plodding and frustrating, with the narrative dragging in places where it should be accelerating.

The film’s climax attempts to tie together the various narrative threads. The issue is that it does so in a way that feels rushed and unsatisfying. It leaves too many loose ends and unanswered questions, which may leave some viewers feeling unsatisfied and confused. The resolution lacks the emotional resonance that should accompany the conclusion of a character-driven thriller.

In terms of its technical aspects, Reptile excels in some areas but falters in others. The film’s sound design and score create an eerie atmosphere that enhances the sense of unease. However, the editing can be jarring, with abrupt transitions between different timelines that disrupt the flow of the narrative.

Reptile had the potential to be a gripping and thought-provoking noir thriller, thanks to its talented cast and promising premise. Unfortunately, the film is hindered by a convoluted and disjointed narrative, underdeveloped characters, and pacing issues. While Benicio del Toro delivers a strong performance as Detective Tom Nichols, it’s not enough to salvage a film that falls short. Reptile ultimately leaves the audience feeling disconnected and unsatisfied, making it a missed opportunity for a genre that thrives on tension, mystery, and emotional depth. Grant Singer’s directorial debut shows promise, but it ultimately needs a tighter script and more coherent storytelling to truly captivate its audience.

• Acting - 6/10 6/10
• Cinematography/Visual Effects - 7.5/10 7.5/10
• Plot/Screenplay - 4/10 4/10
• Setting/Theme - 5/10 5/10
• Watchability - 5/10 5/10
• Rewatchability - 3/10 3/10

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‘Reptile’ Review: New England Thriller Isn’t Cold-Blooded So Much as Lacking a Pulse

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Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2023 Toronto International  Film  Festival. Netflix releases the film on its streaming platform theaters on Friday, October 6.

And yet, “Reptile,” the directorial feature from Grant Singer — a music video director known for his collaborations with The Weeknd and Taylor Swift — isn’t really about Summer or Will. It concerns Detective Tom Nichols ( Benicio del Toro , a co-writer on the script). Sporting a jet-black pompadour and a suave leather jacket, he is not only investigating Summer’s death but also the rot lurking within his police department. Singer’s “Reptile,” distributed by Netflix, wants to be a David Fincher procedural with Steven Soderbergh’s paranoia, but it’s a fangless homage without suspense, logic, or shame. 

Set in the New England suburb of Scarborough, the film, written by Benjamin Brewer, Singer, and del Toro, struggles early on to find its footing. It’s a film afraid to let us independently feel, opting for an overbearing score and clunky cross-cutting to hold our hand through the early investigation. We move, uneasily, between scenes of Nichols questioning Will to slices of life from Nichols’ charming domesticity with his wife Judy ( Alicia Silverstone ). Recently the couple moved to this town to escape Philadelphia, where Nichols was embroiled in a scandal involving his corrupt partner. Even in New England, however, Nichols remains tainted. 

What’s more frustrating is there’s no sense of setting or place amid the manicured homes that dot this wealthy New England suburb. How significant is the police presence? How big is the town? Are there specific local haunts, people, and ways of life we should know? Instead, Singer switches from room to room in the empty houses that clutter a seemingly robust real estate market. The area is so detached from the narrative that the foggy nights that color these scenes seem like the outgrowth of a dream.

“Reptile” doesn’t know how to reach the profundity it desires. After the first hour, the film drones on (and on) around bad clues and worse assumptions. Where is the rhythm? Where is the touch of mood or tone? Editor Kevin Hickman opts for smash cuts to elicit thrills, but inadvertently garners laughs; the film strains for an unearned grittiness that becomes obnoxious. The photography also keeps us at a distance with behind-the-head shots while placing its forlorn subjects in frames devoid of color. The aesthetic misses make the film seem like a parody of Fincher’s handier work and suggest a music video director who has plenty of ideas but lacks the roadmap that would make them coalesce.      

The film’s final act of violence leans toward the intentionally absurd. It’s vicious and loud, and spurred by a Frisbee. Singer’s film would be infinitely better if he filled his narrative with more of these absurd moments rather than rote moves that barely muster the ability to say “cops are corrupt.” Thanks “Reptile,” for the breaking news. But it’s probably best for this crime-thriller to simply slither away. 

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Common Sense Media Review

Grisly violence, language in dark detective mystery.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that murder mystery Reptile contains graphic descriptions of violence, some explicitly violent scenes, and plenty of swearing. A woman is found murdered at a grisly crime scene, and the brutality of her murder is described in detail. People are shot and killed on and off-screen. A tooth…

Why Age 16+?

A woman is found murdered at a grisly crime scene. The mortician describes speci

"F--k," "s--t," "bulls--t," "ass," "hell," "goddamn," "bitch," "piss," "t-ts."

Couples kiss. A man talks about "fooling around," and another mentions "sleeping

There is reference to dealing "heroin and coke," and two scenes involve heroin d

Car brands form part of the investigation. An HP laptop is seen regularly, and o

Any Positive Content?

Most, but not all, bad deeds get punished. Crime doesn't pay. People are complic

Everyone in the film seems to have layers to them. There are criminals, drug dea

The film's lead actor is Puerto Rican-born, but this isn't part of his character

Violence & Scariness

A woman is found murdered at a grisly crime scene. The mortician describes specific details of the brutality of her murder, which involved being stabbed in the vagina. There's discussion of rape and bite marks. Elsewhere there are references to suicide, being "abused, harassed, and tortured," using human hair to make art, stats on female homicide, serial killers, car crashes. People are shot and killed on and off screen. A tooth impression is taken from a dead body. A man describes dreaming of being shot, and a woman admits to fear when her husband used to sleep with a gun under his pillow.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Couples kiss. A man talks about "fooling around," and another mentions "sleeping" with a woman. Another offers a male friend his choice of two women and suggests he could cheat on his wife and nobody would know. A couple discusses losing their virginity in high school or to "a prostitute." There's mention of sperm potency testing, "hookers," and a scene with a nude blow-up doll tossed around as a joke. A man and a woman pose for "sexy" photos at a crime scene.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

There is reference to dealing "heroin and coke," and two scenes involve heroin drug busts. Adults drink alcohol at events and parties. A woman mentions smoking a cigarette. A man has a box of loose marijuana in his drawer.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Car brands form part of the investigation. An HP laptop is seen regularly, and one scene involves discussion of a Rolex watch.

Positive Messages

Most, but not all, bad deeds get punished. Crime doesn't pay. People are complicated and not always what they seem from the outset.

Positive Role Models

Everyone in the film seems to have layers to them. There are criminals, drug dealers, and corrupt authorities. There are also hard-working people trying to do the right thing, and loving couples.

Diverse Representations

The film's lead actor is Puerto Rican-born, but this isn't part of his character. His detective partner is Black. Most, but not all, other characters are White. Some make homophobic jokes and sexist comments.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Parents need to know that murder mystery Reptile contains graphic descriptions of violence, some explicitly violent scenes, and plenty of swearing. A woman is found murdered at a grisly crime scene, and the brutality of her murder is described in detail. People are shot and killed on and off-screen. A tooth impression is taken from a dead body. There's discussion of rape, bite marks and wounds, references to suicide, being "abused, harassed, and tortured," using human hair to make art, stats on female homicide, serial killers, car crashes, dreams about being shot. Sexual content is mostly limited to some mild kissing and jokes and references about cheating, fooling around, sex workers, and sperm tests. A nude blow-up doll is tossed around as a joke. Men make sexist comments and a homophobic joke. Adults drink regularly. Heroin dealers are caught. Language includes "f--k," "s--t," "bulls--t," "ass," "hell," "goddamn," "bitch," "piss," and "t-ts." To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say (2)
• Kids say (1)

Based on 2 parent reviews

This movie also uses the Lord and Savior JESUS CHRIST name in vain multiple times. Philippians 2:10-11 New King James Version 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, 11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

What's the Story?

When a woman ( Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz ) is found brutally murdered, detective Tom Nichols ( Benicio del Toro ) is brought in to investigate at the start of REPTILE. Nichols and junior partner Cleary ( Ato Essandoh ) consider the woman's boyfriend, real estate broker Will Grady ( Justin Timberlake ), a primary suspect. But as clues to the crime unfold, the case gets more and more murky. The woman's ex-husband, Sam ( Karl Glusman ), and a disgruntled man ( Michael Carmen Pitt ) with a grudge against Grady's real estate company appear involved in some way. Meanwhile, Nichols' own shady past lingers over him and his wife, Judy ( Alicia Silverstone ), and some clues are pointing uncomfortably toward people close to them.

Is It Any Good?

Starring a brilliant Benicio del Toro, this detective noir employs an assortment of genre tools to construct its dark tale. Reptile , whose name is never fully explained, packs quite a lot into the fast-moving story, though at over two hours, it could have been condensed more. With a hangdog look and a world-weary air, del Toro plays the aging detective masterfully. The camera closes in on him, especially his eyes, frequently, and as his own skepticism and distrust grow, so does ours. But his character also has human foibles, from his deep and protective bond with his wife (a fabulous Silverstone) to his coveting of a fancy faucet for his kitchen remodel.

There are also more than a couple of hints that del Toro has something to hide in his past, as do most others in this cast of characters. As del Toro goes through the paces of the investigation, the film builds suspense with an onslaught of ominous music, unexpected camera angles, creepy scenarios, and frequent plot twists. All the while, the script (which del Toro and director Singer helped co-write) fleshes out subtle character details, from the way suspect Grady (an enigmatic Timberlake) is groomed by his doting mother, to the family and family-like relationships among the policemen. The production design also does a great job conveying the cops' lives, from wall-papered living rooms to square dancing and poker gatherings to homophobic jokes and other macho banter.

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Movie Details

• On DVD or streaming : September 29, 2023
• Cast : Benicio Del Toro , Alicia Silverstone , Justin Timberlake
• Director : Grant Singer
• Inclusion Information : Latino actors, Female actors, Latino writers
• Studio : Netflix
• Genre : Thriller
• Run time : 135 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : language, violence and some nude images
• Last updated : November 18, 2023

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‘reptile’ review: benicio del toro, alicia silverstone and justin timberlake in a police procedural that starts strong, grows sluggish.

Grant Singer's feature directorial debut chronicles a winding investigation set off by a grisly New England murder.

By Lovia Gyarkye

Lovia Gyarkye

Arts & Culture Critic

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It’s fitting that Grant Singer opens Reptile , his meandering feature directorial debut, with an “Angel of the Morning” needle drop. Chip Taylor composed that aching tune about a one-night stand because he wanted to capture a passionate and ephemeral feeling. “It was beyond words,” he has said of the 1967 song . “And that is the power.” 

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There’s no doubt, from the way Reptile creeps in the first half, that Singer is a skilled director. But there’s something to be said for restraint, which the helmer, who wrote his screenplay with Benjamin Brewer and the film’s star Benicio Del Toro , doesn’t exercise enough of here. In an effort to prove its cleverness, Reptile clanks, rattles and stumbles in its second half. The tricks that initially impressed eventually become hard to endure.

Soon after the film opens, Summer, a young realtor (Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz) haunted by her secrets, is murdered. Her boyfriend Will (an unconvincing Justin Timberlake ), the heir to a real estate empire, discovers her body in the bedroom of a house the couple planned to sell. The site is gruesome: Summer with a knife in her clavicle, blood staining the white carpet. Singer traces the fissures and grooves of the couple’s dynamic with a workman-like efficiency. There are problems in the relationship, sure, but none that couldn’t be overcome. 

Del Toro plays Tom with a winning combination of sternness and softness, moving reliably and with believable ease between these two modes. The detective commands respect among his new colleagues — rookie partner Dan Cleary (Ato Essandoh), the police chief (Mike Pniewski), the captain (Eric Bogosian) and another officer, Domenick Lombardozzi (Wally) — but also obsesses about finding the perfect kitchen sink. The dichotomy sweetens his character, whose job requires him to embody a severe masculinity and make morally dubious decisions. Silverstone’s performance — emphasizing an unwavering loyalty bolstered by a puckish sense of humor — plays well against Del Toro’s. The relationship between their characters, captured in the couple’s domestic banter and their date nights, is one of the more gratifying aspects of the film. 

Singer structures Reptile like a standard police procedural. Tom begins his investigation by rounding up the usual suspects: Will, Summer’s ex-husband Sam (Karl Glusman) and Eli (Michael Pitt), a conspiratorially inclined loner who hates Will’s family. The director gradually reveals each character’s motivations but also repeatedly upends assured conclusions. Reptile relishes subverting expectations. The dramatic cuts and jumps between scenes (editing is by Kevin Hickman) and the menacing sound design seize attention and heighten anxiety. Nothing and no one can be trusted. 

Reptile struggles to justify its 2-hour-plus runtime. It starts to sag in the middle, with the techniques that made for a dynamic first half bordering on parody in the second. One can only take so many shots of cars cruising highways flanked by coniferous tracts of land or characters walking through intimidating hallways before losing patience with the director.

The same indulgence is true of Singer’s use of sound and music. The abrupt start-and-stop of songs in the early going works because it helps telegraph the foreboding mood Singer so expertly crafts. But he ultimately leans too much on the needle drops and booming sound effects shepherding us between crucial moments. The approach dulls the impact; every new scene begins to feel like a red herring. When these touches start to play as gimmicks, it’s easy to forget what the film wanted to say in the first place.

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Reptile Is an Elegant, If Undercooked, Throwback Thriller

Early this year, a handsome, sleek, engaging thriller , Sharper , debuted to little fanfare. Which is a shame, because Sharper comes awfully close to recreating the artful mass-market genre movies that we were once so spoiled with. Perhaps Sharper has since found a life for itself on AppleTV+, but its theatrical run was brief and unremarkable. 

The new Netflix film Reptile, meanwhile, has been out in a very limited number of theaters since last Friday ahead of its debut on the streamer on September 29. I don’t think it has fared much better than Sharper, which is another shame: Reptile is also a good-looking, engaging B-movie made with uncommon intelligence. Music video director Grant Singer ’s feature debut is no perfect object, but it is decidedly, and often successfully, aspiring to be something more than just toss-off streaming content. 

Reptile is about the murder of a young, beautiful real estate agent, found stabbed to death in the bedroom of one of her listings. Her boyfriend Will, another realtor played with understated shiftiness by Justin Timberlake , is the prime suspect, but the lead investigator, Tom ( Benicio del Toro ), thinks the case is more than meets the eye. Tom has a shadowy past as a big-city detective; some long-ago sin has driven him into this relatively staid, suburban second act of his career. So he’s moody, and the suspect is moody, and the film is moody. Reptile has a sense of tone and texture, elevating its clichés into something of distinction. 

Singer—who has directed videos for Taylor Swift and Lorde , among others—stages Reptile with grand visual ambition. He and cinematographer Mike Gioulakis light the film with a chilly glow. The camera is constantly moving at a dreadful creep, panning across a nighttime house or pushing in on a character as they stand and consider something no doubt dark. Yair Elazar Glotman Arća ’s score groans and moans away ominously, lending this suburban murder mystery an eerie weight. 

Sure, it may all be a little Gone Girl , a little Prisoners . But thank god for a some style, for a modern Saturday-night entertainment that genuinely works to be worthy of one’s time and attention. The film’s script, by Singer, del Toro, and Benjamin Brewer , also reaches beyond its trappings; its dialogue is often sideways, strange. Reptile can be choppy, jumping from one slightly off-center scene to another, with seemingly little connective tissue binding them. That does at least urge the viewer to lean in, to listen more closely in order to suss out what, exactly, the film is doing. 

It turns out that, beneath all that aesthetic, Reptile is telling a pretty basic story of corruption and greed. That may come as a disappointment to those hoping that the film’s teasing, evocative presentation is leading somewhere more significant. Yet Reptile isn’t exactly unsatisfying. Its twists and red herrings may be fairly obvious, but its characters are idiosyncratic enough to keep motivation intriguingly murky. Del Toro, who is uniquely adept at a certain grizzled archness, does the most to shade his character. Is Tom a bad cop gone good? A bad one who’s stayed bad? Answers are elusive, but the likely answer is yes to both. 

Reptile has a wry approach to matters of economics as well. Will and his mother (played by an icy but underused Frances Fisher ) are pointed emblems of curdled wealth. And Tom’s obsession with nice kitchens (he and his wife are renovating theirs) pokes sly fun at the petty concerns of striving, bourgeois America. The film could probe more deeply into these matters—much as, well, Gone Girl did. But a sprinkling of class commentary is appreciated nonetheless; it is dismayingly refreshing to watch a contemporary mainstream movie that bothers with any kind of idea beyond its basic plot. 

Reptile also offers the surprising delight of seeing del Toro reunited with Alicia Silverstone , their first such pairing since the disastrous Excess Baggage in 1997. That movie is not one to be nostalgically revisited, but it is a pleasant nod to the past to have its stars back together again. Silverstone is a mild hoot as Tom’s shrewd wife, Judy, who is perhaps as good at investigation as any of Tom’s coworkers. Like the film’s politics, this dynamic could be fleshed out further, to give Silverstone more to do and to enhance the umami that Singer seems so determined to deliver. He gets more than halfway there in Reptile , an effort that merits a watch should anyone find it in the mixed-up files of Netflix.

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Tom Nichols is a hardened New England detective, unflinching in his pursuit of a case where nothing is as it seems and it begins to dismantle the illusions in his own life. Tom Nichols is a hardened New England detective, unflinching in his pursuit of a case where nothing is as it seems and it begins to dismantle the illusions in his own life. Tom Nichols is a hardened New England detective, unflinching in his pursuit of a case where nothing is as it seems and it begins to dismantle the illusions in his own life.

• Grant Singer
• Benjamin Brewer
• Benicio Del Toro
• Justin Timberlake
• Eric Bogosian
• 397 User reviews
• 96 Critic reviews
• 52 Metascore

Top cast 82

• Tom Nichols

• Captain Robert Allen

• Judy Nichols

• Camille Grady

• Eli Phillips
• (as Michael Carmen Pitt)

• Sam Gifford

• Chief Marty Graeber

• Summer Elswick
• (as Matilda Lutz)

• Deena Allen

• (as John Capone)

• Bennett Rossoff

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• Trivia Alicia Silverstone and Benicio Del Toro dated from 1996-1997.
• Goofs About 42 minutes in Del Toro and Timberlake have a conversation in the car at the funeral. As shots go back to Del Toro the steering wheel keeps changing position even though the car is parked.

Tom Nichols : [wakes up after having a nightmare with Will] Piece of shit real estate agent.

• Connections Referenced in Amanda the Jedi Show: I ALMOST Walked Out | The Best and Worst of TIFF 2023 (2023)
• Soundtracks Angel Of The Morning Written by Chip Taylor Performed by Evie Sands Courtesy of ABKCO Music & Records, Inc.

User reviews 397

• Sep 29, 2023
• How long is Reptile? Powered by Alexa
• September 29, 2023 (United States)
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• Runtime 2 hours 14 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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Reptile review: Netflix crime drama's chief problem is it's boring

Crime drama slithers but never bites.

What to Watch Verdict

Reptile, from its score to its performances, is all mood and little else.

Effectively strikes a dark and grim tone

Two hours long and feels it

Lack of action or significant character development

Benicio Del Toro is well-versed in the dark crime drama, as the actor won an Oscar for his performance in Steven Soderbergh's Traffic and should have been nominated for another from his work in Sicario . He brings that experience to Reptile , which he co-wrote with director Grant Singer and Benjamin Brewer, but can't replicate what worked with those earlier movies.

Reptile is a competently made crime drama. It sets out its dark and sparse tone and sticks with it, emphasized by an icy score and a reserved Del Toro performance. However, there isn't all that much underneath those surface qualities, as the movie drags to an underwhelming conclusion.

In Reptile , Del Toro plays homicide detective Tom Nichols, who is put in charge of the murder of a realtor found dead in a house that she was showing. There are three prime suspects: her boyfriend Will Grady (Justin Timberlake), her ex-husband Sam (Karl Glusman) and a suspicious lurker with a past, Eli Phillips (Michael Pitt). However, the more that Tom digs into the case, he finds that few things are as they seem.

The chief problem with Reptile is that it's boring. The case they're working does not require a whole lot of action, which is fine, but with a two hour-plus runtime, it would have been nice if I felt my pulse start to race at least once. Also, an hour in you feel like the story should almost be coming to an end, only to realize that the real story of the movie is just beginning and will continue at its methodical pace for another hour. It definitely feels like a tighter version may have made things a bit more engaging.

Taking time to lay out all the important info can be fine if there's interesting character development going on in the story, but that's not the case here. We don't get to know any of the suspects or side characters enough to be interested in them. That leaves Del Toro's detective, who we get bits and pieces about, but not enough to really understand his arc or root for him beyond his dogged pursuit to get to the bottom of things. 

That said, Del Toro can play this kind of role in his sleep and nails the grizzled temperament of his detective. Also worth giving a shout out to Alicia Silverstone, who is solid as Del Toro's strong and capable wife, and Michael Pitts in an unrecognizable performance (part of it may have been the greasy locks, but it's a solid turn beyond the look). Timberlake is a bit disappointing, with his natural charisma locked away; it makes sense for the character, but he feels like an odd casting choice.

Reptile served as Grant Singer's feature directorial debut, coming previously from the world of music videos. While the movie's look and tone fits what you'd want with a cold crime drama, Singer isn't able to elevate an average script to reach a higher potential. At the end of the day, it's a solid first effort, but perhaps just a bit more than he was ready to take on.

Though Reptile received a limited run in movie theaters, it is a Netflix original movie and it feels like it — a movie that may very well find a niche group of fans on the streaming service, but feels like it would have sunk if it had to rely entirely on drawing people into the movie theater.

Reptile released in select movie theaters on September 22. It premieres on Netflix on September 29.

Michael Balderston is a DC-based entertainment and assistant managing editor for What to Watch, who has previously written about the TV and movies with TV Technology, Awards Circuit and regional publications. Spending most of his time watching new movies at the theater or classics on TCM, some of Michael's favorite movies include Casablanca , Moulin Rouge! , Silence of the Lambs , Children of Men , One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest and Star Wars . On the TV side he enjoys Only Murders in the Building, Yellowstone, The Boys, Game of Thrones and is always up for a Seinfeld rerun. Follow on Letterboxd .

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Review: ‘Reptile’ sheds the skins of too many other superior mystery movies

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Benicio Del Toro holds a movie frame like few in his profession. There’s an invitation to the viewer to take in all his facets — the piercing eyes from a cracked-pottery face, the hulking frame, the weary, coiled delivery — but in that allure lies a confidence that you won’t get everything, and that’s exciting too. He can ace the scene’s needs and convey there’s still more to discover, just you wait.

That’s the kind of actor you want in a crime story, or really any story that hinges on the tense and unresolved, on the things bad people want hidden. And “Reptile,” a studiously atmospheric, layer-peeling mystery from director and co-writer Grant Singer, foregrounds Del Toro — playing a calloused detective investigating a young woman’s murder — in a way that makes you want more of him. But also, regrettably, less of movies like “Reptile,” which tries to match its star’s unpredictable magnetism with a forced eeriness, only growing more ponderous and unfocused, like a case getting colder.

Before Del Toro’s lawman Tom Nichols enters the picture, we’re treated to a prologue of scenes (à la the elliptical openings of “Law & Order: Criminal Intent”) in which smarmy real estate agent Will Grady ( Justin Timberlake ) preps a house, gives a seminar and generally looks shady until, after getting called out to one of his for-sale properties, he happens upon the mutilated body of his colleague and girlfriend, Summer (Matilda Lutz).

As lead investigator, Tom, with loyal partner Dan (Ato Essandoh), chase down leads: a stringy-haired, malevolent figure roaming the periphery (Michael Carmen Pitt), the victim’s shifty ex (Karl Glusman), curious business dealings in the outfit Will runs with his mother (Frances Fisher). Though Tom can be eccentric on the job, he’s observant, rules-driven and upfront, and in his downtime — square dancing and poker nights — clearly cherishes the support of his smart, forthright wife ( Alicia Silverstone ) and her extended family, which includes colleagues on the force (Eric Bogosian, Domenick Lombardozzi).

That these worlds will eventually collide in deception, revelation and further violence is never in doubt, because Singer’s directorial agenda is to have us questioning the motives of everyone, everywhere, always, whether it helps the story along or not (or even make sense). While there’s nothing wrong with a pervasive mood of mistrust — it was a defining feature of the ’70s thriller’s heyday, from “The Conversation” to “The Parallax View” — it’s the sole note here, drifting in variations of unease that feel cribbed from other sources: One moment is Pakula-esque, another like something out of “Fargo,” the next recalling Fincher. Even the dissonant, things-aren’t-right score from Yair Elazar Glotman seems borrowed from a haunted-house movie.

The fallout from all this purposeful gloom isn’t merely that nothing surprises us; even Del Toro’s committed portrayal of a careful man’s gathering disillusionment gets jammed up. (Del Toro also has a screenwriting credit with Singer and Benjamin Brewer.) There’s collateral damage to Silverstone too, whose wonderfully spiky, sexy rapport with Del Toro — reunited after 25 years and “Excess Baggage” — often is treated as paranoia dressing, rather than the building blocks of a character. But at least Silverstone comes across as a figure we’re interested in getting to know. Timberlake, Lombardozzi and Bogosian barely register as anything but cogs in a plot.

That said, Singer’s indifference to coherence doesn’t entirely disabuse a viewer of staying the course. Even a rambling mystery with solid elements — like the proverbial broken clock — strikes the occasional note of worthy tension or insight. If “Reptile” were kicking off a brooding television procedural, you might even forgive its stilted apprehension and narrative malaise for the promise of more Del Toro: A pilot episode’s kinks can be worked out, but a star’s a star.

'Reptile'

Rating: R, for language, violence and some nude images Running time: 2 hours, 14 minutes Playing: Now streaming on Netflix

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‘Reptile’ Ending Explained: Benecio del Toro’s Whodunit Netflix Movie Is Confusing AF

Where to stream:.

• Reptile (2023)

Reptile on Netflix is a new crime thriller whodunit that really makes you pay attention in order to figure out who, in fact, done it.

Directed by Grant Singer, with a screenplay co-written by Grant, Benjamin Brewer, and Benicio del Toro, Reptile began streaming on Netflix today, after premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this month. It stars del Toro as a police detective tasked with solving the murder of a young, beautiful real estate agent. But he quickly—well, not quickly, considering the movie is 2 hours and 14 minutes long—realizes this murder is part of a much larger conspiracy plot.

Also starring Justin Timberlake, Alicia Silverstone, Eric Bogosian, Ato Essandoh, Domenick Lombardozzi, and Michael Pitt, Reptile is a movie full of great performances and a sadly overloaded, confusing plot. There are plenty of red herring scenes that seem important, but then are not, and plenty of seemingly unimportant scenes that in fact, are crucial to understanding what the hell is going on.

If you didn’t catch everything, no need to fret, because Decider is here to help. Read on for the Reptile plot summary and the Reptile ending, explained.

Reptile movie plot summary:

Will Grady (Justin Timberlake) and his girlfriend Summer (Matilda Lutz) are realtors, who are clearly up to something shady. Also, their relationship is on the fritz. One day, Will finds Summer’s dead body in one of the empty houses they were trying to sell. She’s been stabbed to death.

Enter Detective Tom Nichols (Benicio del Toro), who is assigned to investigate the case with his partner, Detective Dan Clearly (Ato Essandoh). Tom is a good cop and well-liked in the department. Tom is married to a woman named Judy (Alicia Silverstone). Judy’s uncle Allen (Eric Bogosian), is the police captain and Tom’s boss. Tom, Allen, and another police buddy named Wally (Domenick Lombardozzi) are all close friends.

• benecio del toro

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The list of suspects for Summer’s murder includes: Will, the boyfriend; Summer’s ex-husband Sam Gifford (Karl Glusman); and Eli Phillips (Michael Pitt), a man who was screwed over by Will’s family realty company. At first, most of the evidence points to Sam Gifford, the ex-husband. Tom and Dan pay a visit to interrogate Sam, but then Sam pulls a gun on the cops and tries to run. In the shoot-out that follows, Tom kills Sam.

It turns out that Sam had a lot of drugs on him, which is why he tried to run. Tom watches one of the cops wrap up the drugs in blue snowman duct tape. The other cops and the media seem to accept the story that Sam was Summer’s killer, even though he never confessed. Tom thinks something doesn’t add up. To the bemusement of his boss Allen, Tom insists on taking a teeth mold of Sam’s corpse, to see if the bite marks match the bite marks on the victim.

Now let’s skip over a bunch of red herrings and confusing, non-relevant information. Sometime later, Tom sees a news report about a drug bust and notices that the drugs featured in the newsreel have that same snowman duct tape. The implication here is that the police planted the drugs to bust some poor kid. Who is that poor kid? His name is Rudy Rackozy (Owen Teague). Eli Phillips—that guy who was wronged by the Grady family—realizes that the Rudy kid busted for drugs also worked for the Gradys at one point. (He realizes this by looking at a poster, so it’s easy to miss.) Could it be that the Grady family is taking out anyone who might squeal?

That’s definitely what Eli thinks. Eli breaks into Tom’s house to tell him that he thinks the Gradys are crooks. Eli says that Summer was being ripped off by a company called White Fish, and he says the Gradys are laundering drug money through their phony real estate business. That’s why Summer never made any commissions on her sales. Eli leaves behind a thumb drive full of proof. Tom goes through the files on the thumb drive, which do seem to prove that the Grady’s were laundering drug money (aka, pretending they made their money from real estate via a sham operation, when they were actually making money from drugs) through a few different phony companies.

Tom all that confirms that the same drugs found on Sam Gifford were used to frame Rudy Rackozy. Hmm, this smells a lot like dirty cops. Will pays a visit to Eli, to demand back the thumb drive that Eli stole. We now have confirmation that Will is definitely a bad guy. But wait, someone else shows up to help threaten Eli! We don’t yet see who it is.

Reptile movie ending explained:

Cut back to Tom, who is now suspicious of everyone around him. While attending a party at his boss Allen’s house, Tom finds the exact car that was at the scene of the crime when Summer was killed, which police have been looking for. It’s even missing the hub cap. That’s pretty darn suspicious. Allen urges Tom to let it go, and promises he will explain everything, if Tom comes by the next morning.

Instead, Tom takes the thumb drive with evidence to the chief of police, played by Mike Pniewski. Tom is a good cop, and he’s determined to do the right thing. Tom and the chief pay Allen a visit the next morning, “to talk.” While the chief is using the bathroom, Allen tells Tom to run. “You gave them the drive! They know everything!” Allen says. Huh? Them?

BANG! Then the police chief shoots and kills Allen. Whoa! This conspiracy goes all the way to the chief of police! It was likely the chief who showed up to threaten Eli in that earlier scene.

After a struggle—in which Tom injures his hand—Tom kills the police chief. His final opponent? Wally, his old buddy from the police station. Tom shoots Wally but doesn’t kill him. Wally tells Tom to finish the job, but instead, Tom calls 911. Still playing by the book!

In the final sequence of the film, we see Will getting arrested by the FBI, and we see Judy helping Tom heal his injured hand. This is a call-back to the beginning of the film, where Tom said he cut his hand in a kitchen injury. At the time, it seemed suspicious—like maybe he fought with his wife—but now it seems that, along with a dozen other beats in this movie, was a red herring. The only person Tom is able to trust in the end is Judy, and she is the one who helps him to heal. Phew! Did you get all that?

Who is the killer in Reptile on Netflix?

Will Grady, aka Justin Timberlake. (Not to brag, but I totally called that when the trailer dropped . It’s always the boyfriend.) But the way this is revealed is via a fairly confusing flashback. Tom is chasing down yet another lead, trying to figure out who Rudy Rackozy called 17 times on the day Summer died. Although it’s not said out loud, we are meant to realize that it was Will that Rudy called. Then, in a brief flashback, we see Will standing over Summer’s body as she dies. It’s way too subtle, especially given that later there is a dream sequence involving Will that turns out not to be real. This is super confusing!

But, I do believe that we’re meant to infer from the flashback scene that Will killed Summer. Summer, we learn, was about to go to the FBI and blew the lid on the whole drug laundering operation. So, Will killed her, and the police tried to pin it on the ex-husband, by planting evidence at the murder scene. But they weren’t counting on Tom being such a good cop.

Again: It’s always the boyfriend.

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‘Reptile’ movie review: Benicio Del Toro aces this old-fashioned, muscular thriller

While ‘reptile’ might not be the twisty thriller that we have now come to expect, it has enough muscle to keep one invested.

Updated - September 30, 2023 01:20 pm IST

Published - September 30, 2023 12:14 pm IST

A still from ‘Reptile’  | Photo Credit: @Netflix/Youtube

There is a Jack Reacher novel where a woman lets the bad guys into her home, thinking they are prospective buyers. All sorts of dreadful things happen before our Rambo-Rimbaud combo deal saves the day. That story effectively dug into the vulnerability of showing or seeing houses with people one does not really know — anyone can get a key and a viewing order after all.

So it is that in Reptile , when the attractive, young real estate agent, Summer (Matilda Lutz), is getting ready to show a beautiful house, one does not even need the ominous music to realise that the viewing is going to end badly. Summer is in a relationship with Will Grady (Justin Timberlake) who runs the real estate firm with his tough-as-nails mum, Camille (Frances Fisher).

There are all sorts of underlying tensions with everyone keeping things from each other. When Summer is brutally murdered, the police step in. Detective Nichols (Benicio del Toro) and Cleary (Ato Essandoh) are assigned the case. Nichols left his earlier department thanks to an internal affairs investigation, which cleared him but made it difficult for him to continue there because of all the bad blood and suspicion.

Nichols and his wife, Judy (Alicia Silverstone), move to Scarborough, where Judy’s uncle, Robert Allen (Eric Bogosian), is the police captain. Through the investigation, Nichols feels he is being nudged in different directions whenever he gets close to a version of the truth. There is no dearth of suspects, from Summer’s ex-husband, Sam (Karl Glusman), to Eli Phillips (Michael Pitt), who feels the Gradys were responsible for his father’s death.

There also seems to be a big, fat conspiracy involving crooked cops and confiscated heroin packed with Christmas-themed tape. Some clues seem just there to muddy the waters and are not resolved, which is rather lazy—what was the deal with the paint?

It is nice that Nichols is tenacious and sharp and gets to the solution not by divine insight or just because he read the script. He gets to the finish by not letting all the many distractions disrupt his path to the truth. And he is not afraid of looking at the truth in the face, however much it hurts him.

While Reptile might not be the twisty, curly thriller that we have now come to expect thanks to long-form streaming series, it has enough muscle to keep one invested. Del Toro’s world-weary yet honest cop, who we have seen from Traffic is here in all his glory, weathered to a smooth silky finish quite like his jacket even as he burns up the dance floor in his downtime.

Sunny Silverstone and Timberlake, who might or might not be the bad guys, are perfect counterpoints to Del Toro’s Nichols. The framing is lovely, with all those reflections foreshadowing the fact that nothing is as it seems as do the evidence of rats and snakeskin. With Del Toro sharing screenplay credits, advertising and music video director Grant Singer makes a stylish debut in this old-school crime thriller.

Reptile is currently streaming on Netflix

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Reptile: Why Judy Puts Tom's Hand In Wax

Mark hamill's 10 best roles outside star wars, live-action masters of the universe movie casts key villain evil-lyn.

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Reptile.

• Detective Nichols uncovers a web of deception and corruption within the Scarborough police force while investigating the murder of real estate agent Summer.
• Will Grady, Summer's boyfriend, is revealed to be her killer and was trying to frame her ex-husband for the crime.
• The film explores themes of corruption and deception, with the use of mirrors symbolizing that things aren't always what they seem. The frisbee scene symbolizes the contrast between innocence and the horrors of corruption.

Grant Singer's thriller Reptile weaves a web of deception as Benicio Del Toro's Detective Nichols tracks down the killer of a young real estate agent named Summer (Matilda Lutz), and in the process uncovers department-wide corruption within the ranks of the Scarborough police force. After going through several suspects, including Summer's lover and fellow real estate agent Will Grady (Justin Timberlake), ex-husband Sam (Karl Glusman), and disgruntled neighbor Eli Phillips (Michael Pitt), he finally discovers the identity of the killer among the characters in Reptile along with their motivation for Summer's demise. Unfortunately, his revelations put him in the crosshairs of powerful players in a convoluted game of cat-and-mouse.

When he brings evidence against the killer and corrupt members of his department to the chief of police, the pair pay a visit to Captain Allen (Eric Bogosian) whose been concealing the identity of the murderer the entire time. Unbeknownst to Nichols, the deception goes all the way to his superiors, and Nichols is forced to get into a shootout with his former colleagues before he can expose the entire conspiracy. Full of red herrings, plot twists, the film delivers on the hallmarks of a gripping procedural but nevertheless leaves a few lingering questions as Nichols uncovers who Reptile's "reptile" really is .

Will Grady Killed Summer In Reptile

In a rather confusing flashback, it's revealed that Will Grady killed Summer. When Detective Nichols is chasing down yet another lead and trying to figure out who Rudy Rackozy called so many times on the day that Summer was killed. It isn't stated out loud but it's implied that Rudy called Will, who is seen in yet another flashback standing over Summer's barely-breathing body. Will intended to pin the crime on Summer's ex-husband, but unfortunately for him, Detective Nichols was too good at his job and traced the burner phone to Will.

Unfortunately, this isn't the most innovative part of the plot, as the killer is often the boyfriend in thrillers like Reptile . While it's enjoyable to see Justin Timberlake play against type, his part in the film makes it feel formulaic. Fortunately, Will isn't given a villainous monologue, but at the same time, getting more scenes involving him being a little more sinister, rather than so much time wasted on Eli and other red herring suspects would have made the reveal feel more deserved.

Summer Was Killed Because She Was Going To Reveal The Truth About White Fish

Detective Nichols initially thought it was suspicious that Summer sold houses for a real estate agency yet often didn't receive any commission for the sales. These sales were part of a drug laundering scheme concocted by Wally and the majority of the police in Detective Nichols' department, and Summer had started calling the FBI in preparation to tell them the truth about White Fish being a shell company. Will finds out about what she was planning to do and kills her before she can reveal how far up the corruption goes.

How White Fish Connects To The Corrupt Police Dept

The corruption linking the police department and the shell real estate company is somewhat convoluted, but Detective Nichols starts to piece it together once he notices that contraband has been suspiciously disappearing from the department evidence room. Wally plants drugs in certain houses and then they get seized, and White Fish buys them for a fraction of their cost and makes considerable profits. Summer was the broker for these transactions and didn't know anything about it at first, but eventually, the guilt became too overwhelming.

Benecio Del Toro's new movie Reptile includes a confusing scene where Judy puts Tom's hand into a wax bath without much explanation or context.

Procedurals like Reptile need to get tighter as they progress, but it's at this point that the narrative gets more convoluted. A lot of loose ends are left dangling, such as why Captain Allen agreed to keep the Chrysler Imperial, seen at the scene of Summer's murder, in his garage. The "why" in Reptile is not as important as the "how," and understanding character motivations only gets in the way of appreciating what they end up producing as far as tension and tone.

Who Showed Up To Threaten Eli?

Eli Phillips is a Nostradamus-looking suspect who appears early on with a motive to kill Summer; Will Grady swindled his family out of their property, which forced Eli's father to take his own life. Eli threatens Will and he returns the favor by showing up one night in his apartment, telling him to stop sniffing around his business. He's joined by another figure who Eli seems to recognize, but they're never revealed to the audience. This person is most likely the chief of police, whose role in the entire tawdry tableau is revealed later when Detective Nichols tries to bring evidence of the corrupt officers to his attention.

What Happened To Eli In Reptile (& Why His Fate Is Left Ambiguous)

After the confrontation between Eli, Will, and the mysterious third intruder, Eli is never seen again in Reptile . When Detective Nichols returns to question Eli again, he finds his entire home scrubbed clean and a bottle of bleach on the counter. While the audience never sees Eli's death, it's implied that he was killed, dismembered, and his body was disposed of at a different location with no evidence left to implicate either Will or his accomplice in the crime.

Eli's fate is left open-ended and ambiguous in keeping with the shifting nature of the case. Singer purposefully makes all the characters suspicious in the beginning, particularly Eli, and including Detective Nichols himself. Eli represents one of the most obviously nefarious characters, but he's not only harmless - he cracked the case, and his death is meant to remain unknown so that fans can make up their own minds as the case progresses, constantly guessing just like Nichols, working to solve it along with him.

The Real Meaning Of The Frisbee Scene In Reptile's Ending

Reptile's intense finale is punctuated by an innocuous moment involving a frisbee hitting the large picture window where Nichols and Wally's incredibly intense confrontation is in full view. Nichols looks over to see children's noses pressed up against the glass, taking in the horrifying tableau of Wally on the ground, his own blood pooling around him, and Nichols holding his firearm. Singer has explained Reptile's frisbee scene in terms of his own position as a novice filmmaker; "The idea is that I'm the kids playing. This is my first movie, I'm just enjoying myself, I'm just playing and this is my thing."

Looked at within the context of the narrative, the frisbee is an ironic act of God that pulls Nichols, Wally, and the audience out of the moment and redirects their focus, and the horrors of what they're participating in are juxtaposed with the everyday act of children playing outside, creating a surreal space for introspection and reflection. The corruption of Wally's world, having already infiltrated friends and family, cannot be divorced from the children's incorruptible innocence operating as a deux ex machina, highlighting that everything has consequences.

Why Detective Nichols Needed Redemption

Benicio Del Toro gives an incredibly nuanced and intense performance in Reptile , using body language and long stares to communicate trauma and a wounded psyche. He's been accused of being on the take at his old department, which makes him a perfect candidate for Captain Allen's, or so Allen thinks, but Detective Nichols wants to actually have a fresh start and peace that will never come. He's asked at one point if he needs to be redeemed, a notion he becomes defensive about, but it's clear that he needs to solve Summer's murder for more reasons than simply being a thorough investigator.

Why The Movie Reptile Is Called Reptile

Before her death, Summer finds a dried snakeskin, indicating all is not what it seems inside her house. The movie is called Reptile because as each character is introduced their nature changes, and after appearing to be one thing, they soon "shed their skin" and are revealed to be something else. Will Grady is a skittish wasp who becomes capable of stabbing his girlfriend, Wally is an avuncular poker buddy who turns out to be the kingpin in a drug scheme and tries to kill the "rats" bringing him down, and Detective Nichols is a perceivably corrupt cop shedding the skin of his old reputation to be an altruistic hero.

The Importance Of Mirrors In Reptile

Cinematographer Mike Gioulakis crafts Reptile stylishly and makes salient use of reflective surfaces, particularly mirrors. Characters reveal key plot points, perform exposition, and question each other from within these glossy parameters, representing the way that things aren't always what they seem even when they're right in front of character's faces. It's an interesting technique that helps give Singer's thriller a distinct aesthetic and oeuvre.

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The Greatest of All Time Review: Vijay Carries The Film On His Shoulders

This review is of the original tamil version of the film.

Measuring up to the aspiration that the film's title spells out is by all reckoning a tough ask. Superstar Vijay, as is his wont, does not baulk at the challenge. He goes all out to embody what his fans believe him to be and manages to land on his feet at the end of the formulaic exercise.  

Diving into the project in a father-and-son dual role, Vijay carries The Greatest of All Time , patchy at the best of times, on his shoulders. He navigates the hurdles that are inevitable in a film as over-plotted as this with customary flair, if not with consistent success.

Director and co-writer Venkat Prabhu weaves the film around the semi-retirement leitmotif that Vijay has employed in a few of his recent releases ( Beast , Leo) . The hero comes out of years of living in the shadows and returns to the thick of the action.

Amid a whole bunch of deadpan throwbacks to the megastar's own films and stray nods to other Tamil movies and songs that place him in the larger context of mass cinema history, The Greatest of All Time perhaps contains a meta-allusion to the upcoming end of the Vijay acting career in preparation for a plunge into full-time politics.

The Greatest of All Time  seeks to extend Vijay's uninterrupted run of box-office successes - a string of nine blockbusters has made him Indian cinema's most bankable actor. The film has everything that his fans crave. What it could have done with is a more original script.

The film juggles with themes that have been done to death - friendship, loyalty, betrayal, guilt and redemption - and culminates in a long-drawn-out climax that pits two personas of the actor against each other. Beyond the parameters of the fictional narrative, one could interpret the confrontation as one between a generation gone by and an era carrying a baggage that blurs the line between good and bad, between sense of duty and the need for self-preservation and vengeance.

Vijay plays M.S. Gandhi - note that the initials aren't MK, but MS. The Dhoni parallel comes to the fore in the film's climax, which corresponds with a make-or-break last over of an Indian Premier League knockout fixture at a packed-to-the-rafters Chepauk.

Gandhi - peace isn't his primary weapon, righteousness is - leads a quartet of secret agents who work for the Special Anti-Terror Squad (SATS), a Chennai-based unit of RAW. He is the MSD of Indian espionage - a great finisher no matter how badly he starts.

That is true of the film, too. The Greatest of All Time  opens with a bang all right but loses its way somewhat through the rest of the first half as it seeks to achieve a balance between the hero's innate bellicosity and familial responsibilities.

As he himself suggests, he has two bosses, one at the workplace, a rock-steady SATS chief Nazeer (Jayaram), and another at home, his wife Anusuya (Sneha). He gets into trouble far more with the latter than the former.

After a series of crucial reveals and a string of killings by a duplicitous young man who surfaces from Gandhi's past, The Greatest of All Time makes it way to an unoriginal finale that is salvaged somewhat by the flair with which it is mounted and filmed. Cinematographer Siddhartha Nuni and editor and Venkat Raajen deserve a mention here.

A devastating bomb blast is only a press of a button away. Gandhi, trained never to flinch, is determined to demonstrate who the GOAT is. He swings into action as thousands of innocent lives hang in the balance.

The team - Gandhi works alongside Kalyan Sundaram (Prabhu Deva), Sunil Thiagarajan (Prasanth) and Ajay (Ajmal Ameer) - is sent on a sensitive mission to Kenya. They waylay a train carrying weapons-grade uranium meant for a terrorist outfit. In the heat of the moment, they end of exceeding their brief.

The ill-advised overreach - it does not yield the desired result - returns to haunt Gandhi, his wife and their five-year-old son Jeevan (Akhil) - and his SATS associates. In the lead-up to the intermission, Gandhi and his boss are drawn into a violent clash with a man who hides his face behind a crash helmet that has 'Devil' written under the visor.  

The remainder of  The Greatest of All Time hinges on a renegade secret agent (who has a massive axe to grind and lets loose unending bedlam) and sundry other traitors and prodigals who push the protagonist and his men to the end of their tether.

The film is at times a touch exhausting because it is overlong. However, the action sequences and plot twists are judiciously spaced out over a three-hour runtime. So, none of them is unduly out of place. Wish one could say the same about the songs (composed by Yuvan Shankar Raja). They not only slow down the film but also stretch it out unconscionably.

The director, on his part, appears to be aware of the effect that the musical numbers are likely to have on the pace of the film. In a sequence that follows the cold-blooded murder of a government official, the perpetrator uses his romantic interest (Meenakshi Chaudhary) as a means to shake off the pursuer. Is this what you called me here for, the lady asks. No, (I called you here) for a song, the man replies.

In a thriller such as this, action is the principal currency. Every song isn't music to the ear. Similarly, not every attempt that the film makes to inject humour into the proceedings bears fruit.

Yogi Babu is thrown in as a man who is in possession of a stolen mobile phone that contains crucial secrets. Taking off from the name of the hero, Nehru and Bose are evoked by the sub-plot to shore up a stretch of the film that does not quite add up.

Vijay, fleshing out two distinct characters, one greying and steely, the other callow and obdurate, and both carrying scars past events, makes up for whatever the film lacks in terms of logic and flow.

That is the sort of rescue act that he has pulled off so often this millennium that it has stopped surprising his critics. His fans, of course, will find no reason to feel shortchanged with what The Greatest of All Time in generous proportions.        

• Cast Vijay, Prabhu Deva, Prashanth, Sneha, Yogi Babu
• Director Venkat Prabhu

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BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE’s Ghost With the Most Carries an Entertaining Mixed Bag

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is not going to “ruin” anyone’s childhood. It’s just not going to make anyone’s either. Tim Burton’s decades-in-the-making sequel is a mixed bag. It has some inspired moments and fantastic performances. But it also has way too many characters, more plot than it knows what to do with, and pacing issues. The result is an entertaining mess that ultimately leans more “entertaining” than “mess” because, even though it has a sentimental side that is oddly out of place, it’s still fundamentally a Beetlejuice movie.

If you love seeing dead people stuck in an eternal state of discomfort, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice delivers the goods. The very present, much-visited afterlife is full of recently deceased who met their end in increasingly hilarious ways. It’s packed with wonderfully “random” aspects that make it a wildly interesting place to revisit. And while it’s full of Easter eggs and nods to its predecessor, they rarely feel forced or corny.

It’s also where you’ll find a character we were led to believe would not be in the film at all. Well, they’re sort of in the movie. What do I mean? Sorry to be so cryptic , but it could be any number of original characters, so I won’t spoil who. I’ll only say their “inclusion” greatly surprised me and how the film uses them is going to lead to a lot of “discourse.”

As for the characters we knew we were returning, two do more than standout. They carry the movie. The first is Michael Keaton. He slips back into his bio-exorcist pinstripes so seamlessly it’s like he never took them off. If, like me, you hold the original film sacred, he’s everything you want from the Ghost with the Most. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice doesn’t overuse him, nor does it misuse him. He is a little different, though. He’s a lot less sinister, but that totally works because the movie shows how his previous encounter with Lydia changed him. It’s one of the film’s smartest evolutions.

The other is Catherine O’Hara’s Delia Deetz, the other original star who steals every single scene she’s in. Every single one. With age—and success—Delia has morphed into her best self, but that doesn’t mean she’s any less absurd or hilarious. The movie never suffers from any real dead spots because O’Hara is always around to keep you laughing.

Newcomer Jenna Ortega doesn’t get as many chances to be funny as her counterparts, but she’s excellent as Lydia’s skeptic daughter Astrid. She’s still mourning her dad’s death, and in a movie full of (maybe too much) ridiculousness, she adds a grounding element that helps it keep a good balance. Astrid’s story is also responsible for adding two things that are big parts of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice even though they were, at most, minor elements of the original film. This sequel has real heart and sentimentality.

How you feel about that will very much influence how much you like or dislike the movie. It didn’t really work for me, for the same reason it hasn’t in the new Ghostbusters movies, another ’80s franchise whose modern entries have also leaned into pulling in your heartstrings. The good news is Beetlejuice Beetlejuice ‘s sentimentality isn’t nearly as cloying or annoying as Ghostbusters . That’s likely that because unlike its spectral counterpart, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice never forgets that it is a comedy first and foremost.

What it does forget is pacing and how to develop plots, both main and sub. The movie’s story feels rushed, as does its actual pacing. There’s too much going on and everything happens way too quickly. That’s all a byproduct of way, way, way too much plot. Whereas the original film is more about experiencing a fascinating world with a story loosely holding it together, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice puts its plot front and center. Then it adds even more plot to the wings until it overflows out the windows.

The main plot is essentially squeezed into the last hour of the movie. Meanwhile its B-plots are so underdeveloped, they’re more like D-plots. Two characters, Willem Defoe’s Wolf Jackson and Monica Bellucci’s Delores, add almost nothing to the film. In fact, each could be cut entirely without issue. That would actually make it a stronger movie because it would feel more focused. There are simply too many characters without enough time to do anything with them. Belluci’s Dolores especially feels like they forgot to include 75% of her scenes, which makes no sense considering she’s billed as the primary antagonist.

Two characters the movie doesn’t forget about are Justin Theroux’s Rory and Winona Ryder’s Lydia. Rory is annoying and sleazy, but as much as I love Theroux, he’s essentially too good in the part because I found Rory really annoying in a bad way. (Whereas I think the original film’s Otho is annoying in a good way.)

As for Ryder, her Lydia has undergone the worst evolution of the original cast. Burton made his most interesting, complex character…well…boring. At one point another character actually asks Lydia to rediscover that “annoying goth” teenage girl she’d once been, and in that moment it feels like everything she’s done so far is prelude to who she’ll become now. Only she never does. She never comes close to offering up anything as dynamic or layered as teenage Lydia.

It’s very frustrating, in large part because Lydia’s current life is incredibly interesting! The movie simply fails to fully explore why, saddling Ryder with an underwritten part.

Like I said, it’s a mixed bag. But not all mixed bags are equal, and I walked out of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice happier with the good parts than I was upset by the bad ones. The good aspects—notably the afterlife sequences, humor, Beetlejuice, and Delia—are really freaking good. The bad aspects—too much plot, too many characters, a weird sentimentality, poor pacing—aren’t bad enough to make toruin the film. They’re just bad enough to keep it from being really good.

The result is that, unlike its still perfect namesake, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is okay okay.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist who gladly shares a name with Michael Keaton. You can follow him on  Twitter  and  Bluesky at @burgermike . And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.

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