Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice

by Julian Spivey

Photo: 20th Century Studios/Hulu

Director: BenDavid Grabinski 
Starring: Vince Vaughn, James Marsden & Eiza Gonzalez 
Rated: R (strong/bloody violence, language, sexual material & drug use)
Runtime: 1 hour & 47 minutes 

Director/writer BenDavid Grabinski’s “Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice” is a whole lotta fun. It’s the kind of action-comedy you may have seen in theaters two to three decades ago that has been jettisoned to streaming-only (this film’s case on Hulu) because comedy doesn’t play in theaters anymore.

Mike, played by James Marsden, is a hitman who doesn’t really have the heart for cold-blooded killing anymore – probably because he’s fallen in love with Alice, played by Eiza Gonzalez. The only problem is that Alice is married to Nick, played by Vince Vaughn, a gangster who is Mike’s colleague. Nick doesn’t love Alice anymore, but still, she’s his. And this is why Mike is in some danger at the beginning of the film.

But Mike has an unlikely savior … Nick, but a Nick from, like, a month in the future. Yes, there’s time travel involved, but you don’t really have to worry too much about that because the movie knows it's just a fun comedy-crime caper and doesn’t bother too much with the science behind it. If you can’t get past that, this one won’t be for you.

You see, Nick knew that Mike was sleeping with his wife and, in a jealous rage, told the crime boss Sosa, played by Keith David, that Mike was the rat who got Sosa’s son, Jimmy Boy (Jimmy Tatro), sent to prison for years.  

There’s not a single character in this film that isn’t a bundle of laughs, and you definitely want to spend nearly an hour and 45 minutes with them, especially the titular foursome. Yeah, there’s twice as much Vaughn, who I know can be a “take him or leave him” personality (even for me), but he’s firing on all cylinders here.

The film is a smorgasbord of pop culture references (I particularly like the “Doctor Who” one early on). Potentially, the film’s highlight is a conversation between Mike, Nick, and Alice while waiting for a scary hitman who takes his victims alive and then eats them, in which the foursome discusses which of Rory Gilmore’s boyfriends from “Gilmore Girls” is the best. It’s a delight and goes on for a ridiculous amount of time, just eating up the scenery.

Tatro and David are a blast as the father-son crime duo, with Tatro doing what he does best in playing a character who is delightfully dumb in the funniest of ways, and David playing the loving, but confused by his son, father, who just wants to give Jimmy Boy the gift of killing the man who sent him to prison.
Stephen Root has an incredibly quick, but incredibly hilarious scene-stealing scene, and Ben Schwartz opening the film as a scientist jamming to Billy Joel’s “Why Should I Worry?” from the animated film “Oliver & Company” is quite fun, as well.

While frequently laugh-out-loud funny, “Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice” can get quite bloody too, especially during a scene with “The Barron,” the cannibalistic hitman, and a balls-to-the-wall shootout near the film’s completion – set to masterful soundtrack moments like Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys Are Back in Town” and Andrew W.K.’s “She Is Beautiful.”

“Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice” is the kind of film that’s probably not going to stick with you for long, but it’s certainly one you won’t regret watching and will have a lot of fun doing so. It’s perfect for a late-night wind-down viewing.