LaRoy, Texas Review: A Violent Comedy Of Errors Whose Cast Absolves The Convoluted Plot

LaRoy, Texas introduces a smirking hitman in a familiar but effectively tense opening that ends with the man burying the remains of his night’s work. As Harry, played unnervingly by Dylan Baker, digs, he receives a call from another client, “Where’s LaRoy?” he asks indignantly. The cut to the title tells us, as does a montage of ranch shops, one with “Texas” painted on it, and the twanging guitar that picks up. As does Brad Leland grinning at his car dealership with the name Adam Ledoux when we all know it’s Buddy Garrity. Where’s LaRoy, Harry? “Texas forever, creep.”

Except that LaRoy is not in Texas, LaRoy is actually in a circle of Hell. Maybe lust, with all the cheating spouses like Matthew Del Negro’s character Junior or Megan Stevenson’s Stacy-Lynn. Or it could be fraud, considering Steve Zahn’s Skip’s constant referral to himself as a detective when even “private eye” is a bit of a stretch. Wherever it is, there are almost zero redeeming characters in this small Texas town where a case of mistaken identity leads to multiple homicides, busted lips, broken marriages, and a hunt for more than $250,000.

LaRoy Texas’ Characters Are Colorful & Evil

It’s the character interactions and their strange behaviors that make the film

The only one who seems void of the evil that’s infected everyone in LaRoy, Texas, from director Shane Atkinson in his feature debut, is our nominal protagonist, Ray (John Magaro). However, he seems void of everything. Perhaps LaRoy is Ray’s limbo with how powerless he appears in the face of his cruel wife Stacy-Lynn, who’s so obvious about her cheating she doesn’t even bother coming up with a movie title she’s claiming to go see alone.

Ray is incapable, to say the least. After discovering his wife’s infidelities, he buys a gun to off himself and in a grimly funny scene, takes the long shotgun handed to him, and while the cashier’s back is turned, awkwardly practices putting it up to the side of his head. He instead asks for something smaller, which has the added convenience of being able to fit right in a glove compartment, just waiting for an opportune moment.

Instead of ending his sad life, Ray is given a large stack of cash to perform a hit and begins a not-so-short and not-so-simple plot of murder and blackmail. Along for the ride is P.I. Skip. If LaRoy is hell, Skip is a long-suffering imp, either bored with torturing the damned or hoping to move up in the pecking order. The black-clad, wild-eyed Skip is a puppy one moment, and the next he’s drowning suspects in the toilet. Skip may be looking to do some good, but there’s a feeling he may just like egging Ray on to darker enterprises.

It’s this relationship between the soulful Ray, played with believable anger, hurt, and fear by Magaro, and the ingratiating Skip that drives LaRoy, Texas. Halfway through the film, despite being more lost than ever and having committed more crimes than when they started, Skip slaps Ray on the back and tells him how much fun he’s having. What a great adventure they’ve been on! You can almost believe him.

LaRoy, Texas’ Plot Trips Over Its Own Complexities

The film’s attempts at being clever only add to the confusion

For as much fun as Skip is having, and for the not insignificant amount of joy that brings us, LaRoy, Texas is too complicated for its own good. At least twice in the film, a character has to stop and spew information like Ray and Skip have just reached a video game checkpoint. It’s a bad sign that each time someone gives an update on where we are in the plot, Skip repeats it back to them. Instead of bemoaning the exposition dump, I was thinking, “OK, one more time, please? I think I’ve almost got it.”

LaRoy, Texas owes a lot to the Coen Brothers’ filmography. No Country For Old Men and Burn After Reading are in its blood, but instead of supplying oxygen and pumping its heart, it pours out onto the floor like that of so many unnecessary characters in the film who we know nothing about except that they also live in LaRoy, Hell.

There’s an aloofness to the violence that gets more morbidly funny as the film goes on, but LaRoy, Texas does not trust its darker sensibilities and the last 15 minutes drift back into a conventional lane and away from the bizarre and fiendish tone that was unexpectedly working up until that point. The plot may start to make a little more sense by the end, but it’s then you realize that staying in hell, while uncomfortable, at least offers some warmth.