After an argument with a legendary board game creator, V. V. Stubbs, who will publish & promote their game but only if he gets sole creator credit & ownership rights, Chris, Adam and Barry have a corpse to deal with and their friendship being tested to its very limits. It’s kind of a low key Game Night, with heavy influence of Very Bad Things.
Murder, Bury, Win was great fun. The three leads of Walker, Lane and Kelly are likeable and have great chemistry, each having their own idiosyncrasies, there’s the serious one, the quite geek and the jerk. They come across as friends to begin with but fractures start to show when they have to deal with accidentally killing their hero, who turns out to be a complete scumbag, played nicely by Cackowski.
There are genuine laughs as the group try to figure out how to dispose of the body, a task Read more...
After an argument with a legendary board game creator, V. V. Stubbs, who will publish & promote their game but only if he gets sole creator credit & ownership rights, Chris, Adam and Barry have a corpse to deal with and their friendship being tested to its very limits. It’s kind of a low key Game Night, with heavy influence of Very Bad Things.
Murder, Bury, Win was great fun. The three leads of Walker, Lane and Kelly are likeable and have great chemistry, each having their own idiosyncrasies, there’s the serious one, the quite geek and the jerk. They come across as friends to begin with but fractures start to show when they have to deal with accidentally killing their hero, who turns out to be a complete scumbag, played nicely by Cackowski.
There are genuine laughs as the group try to figure out how to dispose of the body, a task made more difficult with the unexpected arrival of a local cop and his young board game obsessed son! Just when you think it’s about yo turn into a Weekend At Bernie’s rip off, it thankfully swerves this and still retains a lightheartedness to proceedings.
When they have to start making darker, nastier decisions, the group naturally clashes and questions what they are doing. This leads to some great laughs and a couple of shocks that keep the viewer watching and curious to know what will happen next.
It’s by no means perfect. While the limited setting does mean that it seems more intimate, it also comes across as small and stagey which lessens the films impact. Cackowski while very good in his role, just seems a tad too nice of a guy to be the unlikeable character he’s supposed to be. The direction has little flair, not that it’s needed here, but the score is majorly intrusive in parts. It seems as if it was put together hurriedly and the sound levels for it weren’t completely set as it goes from subtle to unnecessarily bombastic for little to no reason and this hampers certain scenes. Annoyingly, the end is a tad predictable too, but it is played off well with a melancholy joke that hits well.
These are all relatively minor negatives when the whole thing is so engaging and entertaining. You move along with the characters as other, darker traits (some expected, some not) come to the fore. It’s a comedy of errors that, overall, does make too many.
Murder, Bury, Win is an enjoyable 90 minute farce which draws you in with likeable characters, keeps you engaged with solid writing/direction and entertains with a nice line of black comedy.
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75%
5.2
