Far too often, it seems that the term “drug thriller” is code for “Scarface rip-off,” which follows the decline of a rich, usually Colombian, kingpin in dull, cookie-cutter fashion. Rarely, it seems, do filmmakers take the road less traveled and tell the story from the perspective of a drug addict. Tim McCann’s The Aftermath does precisely that.

After separating from his wife, Sonny (Sam Trammell) turns to drug use to ease the pain. Addicted, but hoping to make amends, Sonny reaches out to all of those close to his wife in hopes of giving her a necklace on their anniversary. Before he has the chance to do so, however, the piece of jewelry is stolen by a violent pimp. With all other purpose in his life gone, Sonny sets forth on a journey through a brutal criminal underbelly in order to retrieve his wife’s necklace—regardless of the consequences.

Thanks to a commanding performance from Sam Trammell (True Blood), The Aftermath does an incredible job of humanizing a lying, cheating drug addict. There’s no debate about it, Sonny isn’t a particularly likable character. He isn’t rotten to his core, but he certainly isn’t a guy you’d want hanging around. McCann takes this anti-hero and unapologetically thrusts viewers into his world. Though the film isn’t ultra-violent, nor does it feature a large body count, there is a genuine sense of danger present throughout The Aftermath. Nobody appears to be invincible; anyone and everyone could be killed off at the drop of a hat. Much like McMann’s highly underrated mystery film The Poker Club, The Aftermath takes an unlikely protagonist and places him in an unfamiliar, crime-filled situation. And just like in The Poker Club, the result is a thoroughly interesting, occasionally suspenseful, and at all times well-crafted thriller.

One of the more unique aspects of The Aftermath is its soundtrack, which includes classic ‘50s-style tunes as well as hypnotic, synth-heavy pop tracks. The music is tonally all over the place, but each selection fits brilliantly with its corresponding scene. The music just serves to up the energy of the wild journey The Aftermath encompasses. Sonny’s quest takes him through vastly different areas over the course of the film’s 83-minute running time, including strip clubs, residential neighborhoods, sleazy motel rooms, crack houses, and desolate streets. He is welcomed nowhere—an especially interesting aspect of his character—and no matter where Sonny’s journey takes him, he is seen as an outsider; a vagrant; a junkie. As a result, The Aftermath is somewhat bleak, as Sonny’s literal struggle for some sense of redemption from past wrongs is brutal and unrelenting.

Warm cinematography from director of photography Alan McIntyre Smith gives the film a hazy, almost sticky aesthetic. Everyone appears to be covered in so much sweat and dirt that you can almost smell the body odor through the screen. If the subject matter isn’t seedy enough, the onscreen images will have you wanting to take a shower after the credits begin to roll. There’s no John Waters-esque dirtiness on display, but the griminess of The Aftermath is truly disgusting at times.

The Aftermath is a truly fascinating little indie movie; a completely different kind of adventure film, and one that certainly holds attention. In a world of cheesy drug thrillers and crime romps, The Aftermath keeps things subtle and serious, mixing a story of the perils of addiction with an almost neo-noir attitude. With a deceptive amount of twists and turns, Tim McMann’s latest movie is a completely effective, completely engrossing time at the cinema.

J.C. Chandor’s third feature, A Most Violent Year, is set in 1981 New York City, a year that saw a dramatic spike in criminal activity (hence the odd title). Oscar Isaac plays Abel Morales, a young, self-made entrepreneur and family man who runs a heating oil business with his mob-princess wife Anna (Jessica Chastain), who handles the books. He’s an ambitious, confident mogul who’s always moving forward. His competitors in the cutthroat home-heating market run their operations like mobsters, but Abel’s got more class than that. He covets transparency and morality, and unlike his rivals, he can sleep at night with a clear conscience (though he’s no stranger to shady back room dealings). “I run a fair and clean business, and I will fight to my last breath to prove that.”

A Most Violent Year is about a man protecting his honor at all costs while the rest of the world, even his family, conspires to strip him of it. The son of Hispanic immigrants, Abel started from the bottom as a heating-oil truck driver and eventually moved up the ranks, married his boss’ daughter, and bought the company from his father-in-law, who played the game as dirty as Abel’s rival merchants. With the company in his hands, he turned things around and made it a clean operation. He’s looking to expand, too: a piece of waterfront real estate looks to be the key to cornering the oil market, and he’s got 30 days to close the deal.

Abel’s a man of conviction, constantly in pursuit of the American dream, but all that surrounds him is nightmarish. The rampant violence and corruption of the city threaten to tarnish his squeaky-clean business on the daily, and jeopardize his chances of closing the waterfront deal. As a result of the vicious turf war, his truck drivers are getting held at gunpoint, his salesmen are getting roughed up, and he even finds an armed goon prowling around his McMansion late at night while his wife and kids are home. Surely arming himself and his crew for protection would be the smart thing to do, but he’s not cut from that cloth.

Reluctantly, Abel allows his drivers to carry guns on their deliveries (the first in a series of moralistic compromises), but refuses to tote one himself. When Anna buys a pistol as a knee-jerk reaction to the would-be home invader, Abel loses his mind. “I don’t want anything do to with this!” he roars. If he or she were to ever be seen holding a gun, his reputation would crumble. Adding to Abel’s stack of problems is a district attorney (David Oyelowo) who’s sniffing around the oil industry in search of corruption and malfeasance. It’s a terribly twisty plot, but Chandor’s pace is set at a slow, steady boil to make it digestible. The tension mounts in small increments, until it’s so thick by the film’s final act you feel like you’re suffocating (in a good way).

On two separate occasions Chandor shows us Abel running through the sooty, sapped NYC streets, and together these scenes comprise the film’s most poetic artistic statement. As the film opens, we see him on a morning exercise run, flying past graffitied walls, past run-down buildings, past the urban malaise: he’s running toward a brighter future. Later, we see him running again, in an impeccably-shot foot chase sequence on railroad tracks that sees him hunting down an enemy, gun in hand, with vengeance and violence on his mind: he’s running toward the devil. He’s lost himself, and the film’s real suspense lies in the question of whether Abel’s will is strong enough to not succumb to the unscrupulous ways of the crime lord.

Isaac is a convincing kingpin, always looking invincible in his mustardy double-breasted coat, but Abel’s so monomaniacal sometimes that he feels less like a human being and more like a crime movie cliché. The same can be said for Chastain, who acts with so much kick and venom that it’s a hit-or-miss situation: she either nails Chandor’s sizzling one-liners and looks like a badass, or she overshoots her lines and comes off like a factory-issue mob-movie wife (the wonky Brooklyn accent doesn’t help). They’ve got chemistry together, though, and generate some real energy in their heated domestic arguments. Taking nothing away from their acting abilities (I’m a big fan of them both), I don’t feel like they were necessarily the best fits for their respective roles.

One piece of the story that feels under-developed is the reasoning behind Abel shedding every bit of his immigrant heritage. One can easily suppose that he did it to make his image more appealing on his way up to the top of the mountain, but that’s an uninteresting supposition to make. Julian (Elyes Gabel), one of Abel’s drivers who gets hijacked and beaten, is Hispanic as well, and Abel’s conversations with him are the only time we hear him speak Spanish. There’s a loose symbolism that Julian represents the former life Abel’s left behind (to detail this would be too spoiler-y), but it’s clunky symbolism at best.

Like Chandor’s first film, Margin Call, A Most Violent Year boasts a supporting cast of vets that add gravity and richness to the proceedings. Oyelowo, Albert Brooks, Peter Gerety, and Jerry Adler make brief, but impactful appearances. Bradford Young’s (Selma, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints) cinematography is ashy, atmospheric and textured, and coupled with the phenomenal period set and costume design makes New York City look downright apocalyptic compared to the shining culture hub it is today. Chandor pays homage to Sidney Lumet’s Prince of the City and Serpico as far as the milieu he’s created: it’s a city full of tough guys and alpha dogs who were born to screw each other over and hold meetings in dingy, poorly-lit rooms.

A Most Violent Year is my least favorite of Chandor’s films. I’m still a fan, though; the fact that he went from All is Lost, a boiled-down fable pitting a man against the elements, to a labyrinthine crime picture like this verifies for me that he’s one of the most exciting directors working today. Just like Abel, it’s not in Chandor’s nature to sit still; he’s always moving forward.

A particularly muted Elmore Leonard adaptation, Daniel Schechter‘s Life of Crime has real value in its cast and their skillful performances, but the remaining elements of the film, while not disastrous, lack focus and flair, eliciting half-hearted shrugs and soft laughs. It’s like a Diet Coke version of a classic Leonard romp: While Out of Sight and Jackie Brown crackled and popped, Life of Crime (based on “The Switch”) lightly fizzles and lacks the same big flavor. It’s tasty enough, but it’ll make you long for the real stuff.

We meet two small-time crooks in 1978 Detroit named Louis and Ordell (played by John Hawkes and Yasiin Bey, respectively). In their first kidnapping job, they target Mickey Dawson (Jennifer Aniston), the wife of country club blowhard Frank Taylor (Tim Robbins). Frank’s been doing illegal funny business on the side for a while (involving an off-shore bank account and other big-wig nonsense), knowledge of which Louis and Ordell use as leverage to up the pressure. One million dollars is the ransom, but as it turns out, Mickey isn’t worth a million dollars to Frank at all, since she and her drunk, boorish husband positively despise each other. In fact, Frank’s been secretly shacking up with another woman in the Bahamas named Melanie (Isla Fisher), who he plans on marrying. (The divorce papers were in the mail pre-kidnapping.)

Melanie forcefully takes the reigns on Frank’s side of the hostage negotiations, cunningly bending the situation to her whim. Few revelations or genuine surprises arise as the caper unfolds, but there are a few amusing tangles in the plot. Mark Boone Junior plays a burly Nazi nut whose grungy home the crooks use to stash Mickey, but when he’s left alone with her, things get pretty dicey. Will Forte plays a family friend who’s the only witness to Mickey’s kidnapping (he’s got the hots for her, too), but there’s little for him to do in the grand scheme of things.

Mickey develops a sort of friendship with Louis, who she senses is a generally nice guy, despite him being her captor and all. Aniston’s evolution throughout the film–from hapless housewife to thick-skinned tigress–is gratifying to watch. Hawkes and Bey complement each other surprisingly well (though Robert DeNiro and Samuel L. Jackson’s interpretations of the same characters in Jackie Brown are pretty untouchable), and Hawkes enjoys even better chemistry with Aniston. Robbins and Aniston have fun slinging venom, but there’s little drama at the bottom of it all.

Characters swap positions, deceive one another, and the sprawling plot spirals into a controlled chaos (as many Leonard capers do). The way the film wraps up, however, is so meek and uneventful that it’s hard not to feel disappointed. The labyrinthine events that lead us there aren’t anything to get excited about either. Most moments of tension feel way less tense than they’re supposed to, and most chats shared between the quippy characters are thin and soulless. The film just feels so…flimsy.

As far as set design, the period elements are so inconsistent I often forgot the film takes place in the ’70s. Schechter exhibits skill for sure, but whether or not he was pushing himself to be his best, I couldn’t tell. I don’t think so. He surely had a hand in his actors’ good performances, but there’s a pervading sense that he didn’t impose his style onto the project enough, as if he let the Hollywood stars do their own thing because they know what they’re doing. Check out Supporting Characters if you want to see what he’s really capable of.

Life of Crime trailer

Watching Filth, I noticed a few things. One, I felt increasingly as the film progressed that a good long shower was in my immediate future, and two, that those cunning crystal blue eyes of James McAvoy serve the same purpose in all his films. To absolutely mesmerize. While it’s more often to steal the hearts of females everywhere, in Filth, those eyes hypnotize all, hiding the evil of a man intent on getting what he wants.

From the same crusty mind who brought the world the novel Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh, comes Filth, adapted for the screen and directed by Jon Baird. McAvoy plays Bruce Robertson, a detective with his eye on a promotion to Detective Inspector. When a juicy murder comes up, he’s assigned the lead on the case. In order to assure his lead on the promotion, Robertson starts to attack his competition with coy tricks to drive them mad, expose their secrets and generally make himself look better. The depths of his malice know no bounds and Bruce is driven by the belief that this promotion will bring his broken family back together, since his wife left with their daughter. Even his one and only friendship, with Bladesey (Eddie Marsan) a meek man from Bruce’s masonic lodge, is one of undeserved manipulation and bullying.

Bi-polar and maintaining a pretty heavy drug addiction throughout, Bruce’s focus on messing with the lives of his co-workers begins to deter from his investigation and as things begin to unravel for him the story leads to a twist ending where he is faced with an even more unsettling truth about himself.

Currently available to stream VOD, I highly recommend using subtitles when watching Filth. The Scottish accents are pretty stinkin’ heavy, not to mention their expressions aren’t ones Americans are likely to be familiar with. McAvoy does an excellent job with the role–a truly hideous but engaging persona to watch. His complete lack of a moral compass makes him interesting, but ultimately the shift in plot at the tail end of the film attempt to give him a humanity that just doesn’t seem deserved. A sub-plot involving a woman (Downton Abbey‘s Joanne Froggatt) whose husband’s life Bruce is unable to save–in the one time in the film he acts like a cop–is too intermittent to make us care for him. And the film’s ending, while somewhat unexpected, leaves no real satisfaction.

But that seems to be Welsh’s intent (if indeed the film follows the novel). Baird’s film deserves some distinction for its gritty cartoonish (and indeed there are actual cartoons in the film) visuals, and watching McAvoy wreak havoc is certainly entertaining, but it’s not likely to make the same splash Trainspotting made. The dark humor is too dark at points, while abandoned altogether at others, and the revelations aren’t enough to explain things satisfactorily.

McAvoy pulls his weight, but it’s not enough to push this filth to the top of the trash heap.

Welsh-born filmmaker Gareth Evans’ The Raid: Redemtion shook up the martial arts movie genre in 2011 with its exhilarating action, scintillating fight choreography, and no-holds-barred brutality. The film didn’t have much of a plot to speak of: A police raid on an apartment building filled with deadly gangsters doesn’t go as planned, and voila! We’ve got a killer action movie. Droves of martial arts movie devotees flocked to Evans’ mini-masterpiece of bodily destruction, and now he’s followed it up with The Raid 2: Berandal, a sprawling film (it’s an hour longer) with an expanded narrative element and, impossibly, better fight scenes than the original.

Picking up right where the first film left off, we rejoin ass-kicking rookie cop Rama (Iko Uwais), who’s thrown into a new mission before he can wipe the dried blood from his fists. He’s sent behind bars undercover to earn the trust of Uco (Arifin Putra), the arrogant only son of crime lord Bangun (Tio Pakusodewo). After saving Uco’s skin a few times (most notably during an incredible prison riot sequence set in a muddier than muddy courtyard), Rama (now going by the name Yuda) becomes his right-hand man and earns himself a spot as a henchman in Bangun’s mob after serving his 4-year sentence in the slammer. Making this absurd commitment to his undercover work even more difficult is the fact that he’s left his family to fend for themselves, missing a big chunk of his son’s childhood. While Rama is under Bangun’s employ, a gang war erupts, stemming from a few shady dealings made by Uco, who’s been obsessed with the fact that he’s relegated to diminutive tasks by his father despite being the sole heir to the throne. Amid the chaos, Rama discovers that the cops he works for may be as unscrupulous as the criminals.

While The Raid takes place over the course of a day, The Raid 2 covers several years and locations, and narratively, the scale and depth Evans adds here is staggering. The intricacies of the gang dynamics, set against the backdrop of Bangun and Uco’s father-son conflict and the even larger Sisyphean tale of Rama, can be overwhelming at times. When your adrenaline is still running high following a fight scene and you’re chomping at the bit for more, it’s hard to keep your brain focused on the finer plot details which, if you miss too many, can pile up and make it hard to keep track. Once all is said and done, the overall shape of the story comes across clearly, but some expositional segments feel disposable, especially when sandwiched in between the film’s amazing fight sequences.

The fights are so breathless, so immaculately constructed and filmed that it bandages any negative impact the inflated story has on the experience. Uwais is marvelous on screen, moving at light speed, with pinpoint precision and controlled viciousness. It must take a world of focus and practice to pull of the superhuman choreography Uwais and his team have designed, but every move he and the supporting fighters make looks spontaneous and urgent.

And urgency is what informs Evans’ camera, which is as nimble and mobile as the actors. In an amazing shot, a man is sprinting toward the camera and then suddenly jumps laterally, crashing through a window and landing on his side on the ground. Evans twists the camera with the actor, falling from vertical to horizontal, a kinetic, jaw-dropping effect. He’s a brilliant action director and editor, always knowing exactly what to show, how long to show it, and how to make each blow look unimaginably painful. Cinematographers Matt Flannery and Dimas Imam Subhono, who also worked on the first film, have outdone themselves here, making the tornado-like fights easy to follow and coherent.

The gore factor is high here, even higher than its bloody predecessor. Body parts are twisted and turned the wrong way, skin is slashed, and heads get caved in by a variety of deadly instruments (including a baseball bat, swung by the aptly, hilariously named Baseball Bat Man). This is midnight horror movie-level stuff, for sure. The sheer variety of the fights stands out, with each scenario giving Uwais and his dance partners something different to do. There are fights in cramped spaces like a bathroom stall and the backseat of a car; there are wide-open brawls in flat arenas like the aforementioned riot scene, and in vertical arenas like a night club with cascading balconies; and there’s even a car chase that may be the most violent since Tarantino’s Death Proof.

The crowning jewel of the film, however, is the climactic one-on-one kitchen fight scene, which is perhaps the best I’ve ever seen. It’s a beautiful crescendo of intricate exchanges, false stops, and ferocious flashes of violence. What’s most impressive is that the scene is long, but in a good way: We feel exhausted ourselves watching them devote every fiber of their being to the battle, and as it goes on and on, the characters seem to develop an inexplicable wordless bond as kindred warriors born to battle each other at that very moment. It’s strangely emotional and completely riveting. The Raid 2 is a gloriously savage affair that ups the ante more than any action movie in recent memory.

The Raid 2 trailer