Based on a play of the same name, Small Engine Repair tells the story of a group of three lifelong friends who get together to reconcile after months apart only to have the evening come to a dark and horrific end.
Staring Jon Bernthal (Punisher, The Walking Dead), Shea Whigham (Boardwalk Empire, Joker), Jordana Spiro (Ozark, Fear Street Trilogy), Ciara Bravo (Wayne), Spencer House (Space Force, Teenage Bounty Hunters) and John Pollono (This Is Us), who also wrote and directed the film and play.
Let me begin by saying this: This movie could have been something special. Good actors, an elevator-pitch that sounded incredibly interesting, a cast that had the chops to go dark and deep, and yet there is something fundamentally wrong with it.
While there is a lot of potential to Small Engine Repair (strong male friendships, sociocultural and economic divides, alcohol and drug addiction, father-daughter issues, etc.), unfortunately the film ignores all that and instead doubles-down on a rather meandering/confusing tale of the stereotypical blue collar male New Englander whose life only seems to revolves around drinking, violence, misogyny and homophobia. All of which makes for an incredibly boring and toxic masculine-centric film that loses whatever power it might have had had it been willing to delve into the motives behind that violence more.
Considering the major plot point/reveal of the film orbits around Pollono’s character Frank’s daughter Crystal, she is barely a blip in the film.
In fact, her existence in this movie is barely explored. She is merely an entity to look disapprovingly at her father and then disappear. While the movie wants the audience to believe that Frank’s entire world is his daughter and he will protect her at whatever cost (be that from her mother or possible romantic relationship gone wrong) at no point does he ever look at how his anger and misogyny helped to destroy his daughter at the very moment she needed him.
Instead her undoing allows him to use violence toward the person who harmed his daughter without accepting any responsibility that he, himself helped to perpetuate that harm. It almost feels like a bigger betrayal in some ways and would have been a far more remarkable film if it took the time to really get into how a toxic father can truly hurt a daughter.
What is especially frustrating about Small Engine Repair is that it is really well-acted (especially by Shea Whigham who plays Packie and deserves far more screen time than he gets) almost to the point that it is incredibly disappointing to witness such a strong cast working with a weak film script.
I can’t really say if there is substantive difference in pacing or dialog between the film and play versions as I haven’t seen or read the play, but I do know that the play runs around 70 minutes while the film runs an additional 30 minutes so I am left to wonder how much filler was added that cut into the strength of the original script and dialog (which won rave reviews both in LA and NYC).
After watching the film and feeling that it was missing something important, I believe that “something” is perhaps the fact that Small Engine Repair should have ultimately remained a play where the confines of an intimate set gave it a ferociousness that is diluted by moving it to a big screen.
As a film, it is just a boring, unexplored mess.
* * * * *
Produced by Peter Abrams, Jon Bernthal, Rick Rosenthal, Noah Rothman
Based on Small Engine Repair by John Pollono
Written and Directed by John Pollono
Starring Jon Bernthal, Shea Whigham, John Pollono, Spencer House, Jordana Spiro, Ciara Bravo
