Other tech contributions are sleeker, with Amir Mokri’s widescreen lensing playing off both the sun-bleached dilapidation and scuzzy neon allure of the film’s very particular (and, to its credit, heavily used) Venice Beach locale. With nearly half an hour passing before he and Willis so much as share a scene, the two actors hardly get a chance to build a rapport - indeed, thanks to some rather choppy editing, they often appear to be occupying separate, albeit markedly similar, films. Essentially repackaging his sweet-geek shtick from TV’s “Silicon Valley,” the ever-affable Middleditch can’t quite mask the impression that his entire character was a later modification to the script, driving no part of it despite his overseeing voiceover. Least successful of all is the Cullens’ half-cocked attempt to fashion the film as a buddy detective comedy, with Willis’s antics shadowed throughout by his younger, dorkier apprentice John (Thomas Middleditch), a film noir buff who contributes needless, goofily soft-boiled narration throughout. The film stars Bruce Willis, Jason Momoa, John Goodman, Thomas Middleditch, Famke Janssen, Adam Goldberg, and Jessica Gomes. What we do get is Willis skateboarding butt-naked over the streets and bar counters of Venice, a handgun wedged in his anus, during a frenzied chase sequence: hardly Raymond Chandler, but a peak setpiece the film oddly squanders in its first reels. Once Upon a Time in Venice is a 2017 American crime comedy film directed by Mark Cullen in his directorial debut, who co-wrote with his brother Robb. The structural model here lies somewhere between the Coens’ “The Big Lebowski” (echoed in particular with Goodman’s presence) and Robert Altman’s “The Long Goodbye” - but the film has neither the wit nor the atmosphere to pull off even its broader, bro-ier take on such territory.
(No prizes for guessing that women get the shortest shrift here: as Ford’s sister and Dave’s ex, respectively, Famke Janssen and Elizabeth Rohm have little to do but glower with a weary sense of neglect that can’t be difficult for any actress in this boys-first romp to channel.) “Venice” is more interested simply in hanging out with Willis’s kinda-cool, kinda-clumsy dude as he bumbles about his business - and, somewhat extraneously, that of his best pal Dave (a drawn, bored-looking John Goodman), a surfing store owner in the throes of divorce crisis. The mountingly idiotic specifics of the plotting are, however, beside the point. The script smugly lampshades the offensiveness of the latter’s nickname - a trick it distastefully repeats at several points with regard to black, Latino and transgender characters, all treated chiefly as figures of fun. In addition to recovering Buddy from the muscled clutches of drug lord Spyder (Jason Momoa, whose gruff charisma deserves more generous use), Ford’s investigations also entail returning a missing Samoan beauty (Jessica Gomes) to the custody of her hothead brothers, and unmasking the pornographic graffiti artist maliciously defacing the buildings of sleazy property developer “Lew the Jew” (Adam Goldberg).
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