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A small town in New Mexico: Mortician brothers Arthur (Mike Starr) and
Vincent (Jude Moran) - both well-respected in their community, with the
former also being the local priest and mayor - receive news that a
former business partner of theirs, Lloyd (Christopher Lloyd), has been
released from prison - he has served for pedophilia charges -, and they
immediately start to panic. Turns out they have swindled him out of quite
a bit of money, and naturally he now wants it back. But before Lloyd can
do anything much about this, he is killed, shot dead in his own home.
Local law inforcement is actually less than interested in solving the
murder case as Lloyd was hated in the community for what he has done, but
state police sends in one of their best, Orlando Hudson (Michael Jai
White), but being the black intruder in a tightly knit community, he
immediately meets resentment, first and foremost from the local sheriff
(Jack Forcinito). But Orlando's not one to be deflected that easily, so by
the by he digs up witnesses the local authorities have just overlooked,
cuts through a lot of red tape, and slowly but surely gets on the trail of
Arthur and Vincent - and those two start falling out, as while they're
tied to one another they have different plans for the future, and Vincent
more and more feels that Arthur wants to cheat him out of their money. And
when Vincent gets his new girlfriend Connie (Aida Turturro) in on things,
that doesn't really help - and ultimately everything's heading to a rather
dramatic finale ...
Fan favourite Sally Kirkland plays a small but important role as
Lloyd's not necessarily perfectly loyal business partner.
Allegedly this film is based on a true story, and at least for
me that's usually a bit of a red flag as it tends to be an excuse for
sloppy and unstructured storytelling, as real life just doesn't structure
its stories terribly well - but none of this is true for Making a
Killing, it's a crime movie with plenty of attitude, quirky twists,
self irony where it fits but also its fair share of violence, great
characters, a noirish feel to the story, a slick directorial effort, and a
top notch cast. In all just a pretty great movie!
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