Movie Review : The Tax Collector (2020)
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Disclaimer: This review was originally published in my February newsletter.
I remember pretty vividly being twelve years old. Back then, if a genie offered me three wishes I would’ve chosen: 1) Not being twelve years old 2) The ability to sing like Chris Cornell (still a wish today) and 3) To be fucking badass. Granted that my idea of badass was weirdly influenced by Jean-Claude Van Damme and pro wrestler Razor Ramon, there’s nothing I wanted more than to exert power over another human being. I eventually got over it, but some men never do.
In his latest movie The Tax Collector, David Ayer’s idea of badass revolves around being extremely impolite, bragging about past accomplishments and not wearing an undershirt. You know, the basics.
The Tax Collector tells the story of David (Bobby Soto), a cartel tax collector who really loves to threaten people who are late on their payments. His business seems to be going barely OK until an associate (UFC fighter Brian Ortega) straight out refuses to pay him. An old foe of David's uncle (George Lopez) named Conejo (Jose Martin) is moving onto his territory with the intent to take over. Conejo has a weird name, but he isn't fucking around and David's work will soon start to poison his family life. He lands at the center of a pretty fucking brutal turf war.
I wanted to watch The Tax Collector for a very precise reason: Josie and I really enjoy the acting of Shia LaBeouf and we thought the idea of him playing a gangster was amusing. We were only partially right. LaBeouf plays Creeper, David's psychopathic muscle. He's both extremely charming and incompetent at his job. Spoiler: he dies halfway into the movie, without inflicting any consequential damage to anyone. I'm sorry for ruining it for you, but it felt like false advertisement to sit through The Tax Collector only to witness Conejo torture and kill a helpless Creeper halfway in. Fuck that, you should know going in.
LaBeouf is also the movie's main selling point. It doesn't have much else going for itself otherwise, except a bunch of LA gangsters behaving like bored eight graders behind a 7-11 on a Saturday evening. The overall idea is that you should empathize with David because a just a decent man trying to protect his family from the savagery of his professional activities... but David is not a decent man at all. He's the entitled heir of local gangsters who cannot cope with the reality of what he's doing. If you want to be a family man, be a family man. You know? If you want to be a gangster, don't act heartbroken if your job is getting people you loved killed.
That shit comes with the territory, bro. Walk it off and exert revenge.
There's a brutally corny scene two-thirds into The Tax Collector where David bathes his dead wife (oops!) in a bathub filled with her own blood like he's Hamlet or some shit. Playing the sensitive gangster card is such a weird decision to take in a movie that otherwise revels in shootouts, gore and characters who don't look all that stressed out from the violence around them.
I mean, at one point David has a fucking birthday party in his backyard while there's a crazy, bloodthirsty weirdo in town gunning for him. This is surprising coming from David Ayer who wrote Training Day and End of Watch, but he wouldn't be the first guy not to be trusted around his pet projects.
My twelve years old self would've loved The Tax Collector, but thirty-eight years old me thought it was disconnected, corny and way too self-serious to come off like a Grand Theft Auto ripoff. Hyper-violent gangster movies work better when the characters aren't realistic at all. The Godfather worked because it was not all that violent except for a few key scenes. I know you guys like Narcos and whatnot, but gangster fantasies are extremely lame and don't translate into gritty, compelling drama. It's one of these movie that would've flopped anyway if it had been released in a normal years.
Not good. Not even good for a so-bad-it's-good viewing.
