California, Carrie Coon, drama, film festivals, Glen Fleshler, Jeffrey Reiner, Lake George, Max Casella, movies, reviews, Shea Whigham, Tribeca Festival, Tribeca Film Festival
December 28, 2024
by Carla Hay
Directed by Jeffrey Reiner
Culture Representation: Taking place in California, the dramatic film “Lake George” features an all-white group of people representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A recently paroled fraudster gets pressured to kill a woman in a murder-for-hire plot, but she convinces him let her live so that they can steal from the person who ordered the murder.
Culture Audience: “Lake George” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and are interested in watching a crime thriller that is darkly comedic.
“Lake George” is a topsy-turvy crime thriller that has touches of dark comedy and is mostly watchable because of compelling lead performances from Shea Whigham and Carrie Coon. Some of the movie’s dialogue is a little forced but the story is engaging. “Lake George” has a familiar concept of two people with opposite personalities who go on a road trip and have conflicts with each other but find a way to work together toward a shared goal.
Written and directed by Jeffrey Reiner, “Lake George” had its world premiere at the 2024 Tribeca Festival. “Lake George” has a total running time of nearly two hours, which seems a little long for a compact story where the ending can easily be predicted. The same story could’ve essentially been told in 90 minutes or less because a few of the scenes in “Lake George” tend to wander a little bit. The movie takes place in California (mostly in the Los Angeles area), where “Lake George” was filmed on location.
Despite certain predictable plot developments, “Lake George” can still maintain viewer interest because of the movie’s characters, who aren’t exactly upstanding people, but nevertheless might get viewers intrigued about what will happen to these characters. “Lake George” begins by showing protagonist Don (played by Whigham) waking up in his motel room and having a mild panic attack. Don is a recovering gambling addict who has recently been paroled for insurance fraud and is trying to find a legitimate job.
A montage shows that Don hasn’t been having much luck with his job search. In phone call after phone call, Don gets bad news. People who promised him a job after he got out of prison no longer have the job available. In one case, the person who promised the job is now deceased.
It’s later revealed that Don is divorced and on his own. Don’s wife divorced him because of his criminal activities, and he is estranged from his children. The reason why Don spent time in prison is also revealed much later in the movie. Don is the most realistic character in this movie, which has a tendency to make other characters a little bit on the cartoonish side.
One day, when Don is in his motel room and trying to figure out what to do next, he gets an unannounced visitor: a thug named Harout (played by Max Casella), who forces himself into the room, points a gun at Don, and says, “Armen wants to see you.” Harout works for a wealthy criminal named Armen (played by Glen Fleshler), who has a nefarious job offer that Don is forced to take.
When Don arrives at Armen’s mansion, Armen says that he and Don owe each other a favor. “You pay me for your fuckup, and I’ll pay you what I owe you.” It’s later revealed that Don used to be an insurance agent, and he got pulled into Armen’s criminal activities when Armen paid Don to create false insurance claims. Don took the money to support Don’s gambling habit.
Eventually, Don and Armen got arrested for their insurance fraud. Armen was acquitted because he could afford better legal representation, while Don was the one who was sent to prison for their insurance fraud crimes. Armen is still bitter about the arrest and blames Don for both of them getting caught.
And now that Don is out of prison, Armen tells Don that he wants Don to kill Armen’s ex-girlfriend Phyllis (played by Coon) because, as Armen says: “She’s a dirty cunt. She knows too much.” Armen explains that he met Phyllis when they were in rehab together for cocaine addiction.
After they both got of of rehab, Armen made Phyllis his assistant, and she found out about all of his dirty dealings but stayed with him. Phyllis is no angel: It’s revealed later in the movie that she’s spent time in prison for cocaine trafficking. Now that Armen and Phyllis have had a bad breakup, Armen wants her dead because Phyllis knows a lot of his secrets.
Don immediately refuses to become an assassin because he says he’s not a murderer. Armen insists that’s exactly why Armen wants Don for this murder-for-hire job—because Don would be an unlkely suspect. After some arguing back and forth, Armen gets impatient and tells Don that Don will be murdered if Don doesn’t kill Phyllis.
Armen supplies Don with the .45 caliber gun and a 1983 Mercedes-Benz diesel station wagon that Don is supposed to use to commit this murder. Don is also given a photo of Phyllis and is tasked with stalking her and killing her wherever Don thinks is best, within a 72-hour period. It’s a crucial mistake for Armen to let a nervous and reluctant amateur do this type of planning on his own because too many things could go wrong. No one ever said that all criminals are smart.
Don carries out the stalking part of this plan and eventually kidnaps Phyllis in a parking garage where there are no other witnesses. Phyllis is talkative and sarcastic. As already revealed in the “Lake George” trailer, Phyllis convinces Don not to kill her when she tells Don that she knows where Armen keeps a fortune worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, locked in safes in his various homes (which she calls “stash houses”) in California. Phyllis says she knows how to open each safe, so she persuades Don that they should steal this fortune, split the money, and then go their separate ways.
Don agrees to this idea because he never wanted to kill Phyllis. The rest of “Lake George” is a “race against time” for Phyllis and Don to steal this fortune without getting caught. Don has been dreaming of retiring and living in a remote house near Lake George in Mammoth Lakes, California, which is about 311 miles northeast of Los Angeles. Getting an instant fortune would allow Don to live out that dream.
“Lake George” is more than a crime caper. Much of the movie is about the tension-filled relationship between “sad sack” Don and “firecracker” Phyllis. In order to pull off this audacious robbery spree, they both need to have some trust in each other, but it’s easier said than done. Even though Phyllis and Don take fake death photos of Phyllis to send to Armen, other things don’t go quite like how Don and Phyllis thought they would.
The prickly banter between Phyllis and Don keeps “Lake George” rolling along at a fairly even pace, although some parts of the dialogue tend to drag. The best parts of the movie are seeing how Don and Phyllis handle unexpected occurrences. It should come as no surprise that Phyllis is much more trigger-happy than Don. “Lake George” won’t be considered a classic movie, but it’s better than the average film of this type because the talented principal cast members keep this somewhat formulaic story afloat.
Magnet Releasing released “Lake George” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on December 6, 2024.