Buddy (Jamie Kennedy) is such a likeable, guy - no, he really is ...
sure, he might not be the smartest or most successful bloke ever, matter
of fact he's a downright loser, but he does the best he can to support his
family, and he especially loves his daughter Molly (Milana Lev) to pieces,
in a way more fathers should, and after a spell of alcoholism, he does his
best to stay dry, even if it's not always easy ... and then everything
falls apart: His drycleaner business is going to the dogs, his ex-wife
(Nicole Alexandra Shipley) is sending some muscle (HenRii Coleman) to get
him to pay alimony (money he truly hasn't got), he finds out his wife
(Sara Malakul Lane) is cheating on him, with his best friend (David Gere)
of all people, and when he confronts her about this, she throws him out of
the house, he lands for a night in jail, and before he knows it, she's
divorcing him. Buddy moves in with his mother (Sally Kellerman), who loves
him very much, but then she has a heart attack, and because his rich
brother (Steve Hanks) won't pay for her treatment, she dies, he finds out
the father (Harwood Gordon) he has hardly known isn't his real father but
his father's killer, and so on and so forth. It seems, in all of the
world, he has only two friends left, his daughter who's sticking with him
through everything, and weirdly enough his employee (Demetrius Stear) whom
he hasn't paid in months ... Well, it's almost understandable with all
of these worries on his shoulders, Buddy cracks starts drinking again, and
that doesn't help one bit of course ... but eventually, Buddy realizes
there is a way that makes him feel better - and that's brutally killing
the people who he thinks have wronged him. So he arms himself with a gun
and a chainsaw, and ... well, he starts leaving a trail of blood, but not
only due to the fact he's drunk most of the time he turns out to be not
all that much of an accomplished killer, and he's particularly bad at
hiding his tracks ... Buddy Hutchins is a clever little
piece of black dramedy: Basically it leaves you little choice but to
identify with its main baddie, but not so much because because one
identifies with the way of violence he has chosen (rather by accident,
really), but because there's a little bit of buddy in all of us. He is not
a bad guy per se, fate has just chosen to have shit rain on him in one
continuous barrage, and there is a point where he just snaps, and even if
his actions are by no means justified (not even in the context of the
movie), the people he does kill have actually really wronged him, and he
does his best to keep those innocent out of harm's way (not always
terribly successful though). All this is of course due to a very clever
script, a great, likeable central performance by Jamie Kennedy, who really
carries the movie, and a directorial effort that doesn't go for cheap
jokes or maximum spectacle but is interested in actually telling the story
- and succeeding, too. Actually, a really cool movie!
|