Weekend Watch: The Tax Collector And Selling Sunset
LA two ways
Image Credit: RLJE Films
Welcome to the latest edition of Weekend Watch, in which I recommend (or occasionally warn against) movies or TV shows I’ve been checking out. This week, David Ayer returns to LA’s brutal streets via The Tax Collector and a very different look at the city – sort of – in reality realtor series Selling Sunset.
The Tax Collector hits so many of writer/director David Ayer’s usual targets that it’s tempting to opine, “Oh look, David Ayer made his film again.” Ayer has had lots of success navigating the gang–filled streets of Los Angeles, diving into the more dangerous neighbourhoods of South Central to bring films such as Training Day (which he wrote, and Antoine Fuqua directed), End Of Watch and Street Kings. After a diversion into different territory with Suicide Squad and Bright, he’s now back in more familiar places and plots. Just with far less entertaining results.
The focus here is David (Bobby Soto), who works collecting the monetary cut of various local gangs’ dodgy dealings for his boss, Wizard (Jimmy Smits). He cruises the streets with cohort Creeper (Shia LaBeouf, sporting a tattooed torso), who seethes behind his shades when making collections, but otherwise likes to eat healthily. David tries to keep his gang work away from his family (including wife Alexis, played by Cinthya Carmona) as much as he can, for good reason. But when an old rival of Wizard’s returns to Los Angeles from Mexico, the stage is set for a huge clash, one that threatens the people David loves.
Despite Ayer’s claims to authenticity – he lived in South Central for years as a younger man – The Tax Collector – never reaches the level of his earlier work. Despite strong wrong from Soto, George Lopez, Smits and others, the characters rarely come across as anything other than ciphers you’ve seen in a hundred gang-themed movies in the past. The violence is typically brutal, but Ayer is never able to tie it into true emotion.
Then there’s LaBeouf. Creeper is an odd character, though hardly seems to be the badass that people make him out to be, who is either a white guy who so longs to be Latino that he’s almost at Ali G levels of copycat behaviour or if he’s supposed to be Latino himself, a terrible case of racially insensitive casting). And while the actor throws a lot into him, he’s often more ridiculous than threatening.
The film around him (though Soto is wisely more the focus) is certainly stylishly shot, but all the attempts at gritty filmmaking in the world can’t compensate when the core is hollow. Dialogue drips with macho posturing and there is a lot of blood in play later on, but it’s all for nought. One for the Ayer completists who were hoping he’d back to where he’s most comfortable, even if it’s likely to make viewers uncomfortable.
The Tax Collector is out Friday on limited release in cinemas and streaming in the US. A UK date has yet to be announced.
I have an admission to make before I proceed with this review: until about two years ago, I’d barely watched a frame of “reality” television outside of behind-the-scenes looks at airports and customs officers. Never one drawn to warring wealthy housewives, bickering Big Brother contestants or anything where the concept of truth is massaged to the point of near non-existence, I’d preferred by fiction to announce itself with spaceships, aliens, ghosts or chemistry teachers who turn their hand to making meth.
What happened in that time? My other half, She Who Enjoys the likes of Survivor, The Amazing Race and a lot of HGTV’s output, moved in and, as so often happens in relationships, viewing habits shifted. So now I find myself binge-watching seasons of Million Dollar Listing: Los Angeles, where realtors with egos the size of planets sell houses owned by rich people to other rich people. It’s a little like watching a documentary (albeit with an awful lot you still know has been manipulated) about another planet, a chunk of Los Angeles that most of us only know through stories in trashy celebrity magazines or reports of giant homes sold. MDLLA is still compelling in its own way, the various realtors sparring and figuring out their own ways of flogging either mansions with issues or giant, sprawling concrete and glass boxes for the modern crowd.
So here I am now, with Selling Sunset, which returns for a third season of eight episodes on Netflix. Essentially a blend of MDLLA with more of the interpersonal drama you expect from one of those Housewives shows (which even my other half can’t bring herself to watch) Selling Sunset follows the employees of the Oppenheim Group Real Estate company, who spend some of their time flogging expensive homes but are mostly consumed with internecine squabbles, confrontations usually coming to a head at open houses, weddings and birthday parties. Into this world drops Chrishell Stause (AKA Chrishell Hartley, married at the time to This Is Us star Justin Hartley), who joins the business at the start of the first season and has to navigate a shark tank of cliques and verbal backstabbing that includes Christine Quinn (ambitious, engaged to a tech billionaire, doesn’t know what a cabin is), Mary Fitzgerald (the favourite of the bosses, which causes much tension with her colleagues) and Maya Vander (Israeli, blunt). Think Mean Girls meets real estate. There are also Jason and Brett Oppenheim, who own and run the company, though they’re mostly relegated to how they interact with their staff (see below about Mary Fitzgerald). Stause is a handy audience surrogate, helping you figure out the various, shifting allegiances. Her story dominates the latter half of Season 3, as her marriage suddenly falls apart during the build-up to Christine’s own nuptials. Suffice to say, Christine walks down the aisle looking like the evil queen from a fairy tale, which might be a little on the nose, or nose job, even for this series.
For the most part, it’s glitzy, fast-moving stuff, switching between scenes of the women lunching, arguing or working, and glamour shots of the houses they’re selling. The transition music honestly sounds like the same song played over and over again with just a few lyrics changing here and there, but that’s part of the charm. How much you get out of the show might depend on how much arguing you can deal with, but it becomes more and more watchable as you get to know the various personalities – and I say that as someone who never previously cared about such things. There’s also the barrier of your tolerance for rich people behaving greedily. There’s a lot of privilege on display here, which will certainly turn some off. And don’t go thinking that this has much in connection with actual reality; while you can imagine this bunch finding any reason to disagree, there’s just as much of a feeling that offscreen producers are prodding things along.
I do wonder what my younger self would think of these recent indulgences (a mixture of confusion and rank horror), but I’m going to keep on watching – and occasionally cringing at – Selling Sunset.
But still not Big Brother or The Real Housewives. Ever.
Selling Sunset Season 3 arrives on Netflix on Friday, August 7 worldwide. Seasons One and Two are already available to stream.