Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice

4 outta 5

As far as buddy gangster time travel movies go, Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice is unique. The time travel aspect is kooky and nonsensical, but works for the characters’ story. There are a lot of quips from everyone that keeps things light, and yet the emotional bits hit hard. But this movie is really more of an action buddy comedy with some sci-fi elements thrown in. Also there’s a banger soundtrack of ‘90s hits that propel various scenes. It may ping-pong wildly between tones and genres but that makes for a distinctly oddball flick.

Mike (James Marsden) is a mob hit-man who wants to quit. Mostly because he is tired of all the killing and violence, but he is having an affair with Alice (Eiza González), the wife of mob enforcer, Nick (Vince Vaughn). This gets weird when Nick brings Mike on a job to chloroform a guy who turns out to be Nick’s exact double. Nick is actually from 6 months in the future and he wants to right some wrongs, as this was the night Mike was killed. So Nick from 6 months in the future found a time machine made by the quirky Symon (Ben Schwartz). There is also the extra factor that Jimmy Boy (Jimmy Tatro) has come back from prison, which makes his mob boss dad Sosa (Keith David) very happy. As a gift, Sosa is going to give up the rat that sent Jimmy Boy to prison, who Sosa believes is Mike. Now Mike and the two Nicks and Alice must fight off a cannibal assassin named the Barron who is coming for Mike, and eventually get into a confrontation with Sosa and Jimmy Boy. All while trying to keep Present Day Nick alive so that Future Nick won’t be erased from existence.

The time travel stuff is pretty doofy. There really isn’t any explanation about how it works and why it was made aside from a few scenes of Symon being wacky, but Schwartz is very very good at being wacky. Alice clues in quickly about the whole time travel thing but that is because Symon told her all about it. Nick already used the machine, so he knows how it works. The time travel device is basically a big white box with a very simple to set date. The much better, and funnier, Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie had some silly rules for the accidental time travel device which made it compelling, here it just exists.

But time travel works as character motivation for Nick, he is haunted by his past mistakes and inaction that led to Mike’s death (a death that they learn would have deprived Alice of a father to her unborn child). In the few months, Nick has changed his whole outlook, which makes him cringe when he sees how mean present day Nick is. Vaughn manages to use both his comedic side and his often menacing physicality. There is a great bit when things are looking dire and both Nicks, and eventually Mike and Alice, start singing along to “Don’t Look Back in Anger” as Future Nick slowly starts to realize that things aren’t going to turn out great for them. This is one of the few spectacular needle drops through the film, like a climatic action scene to “Block Rockin’ Beats” by The Chemical Brothers. Now that song has been used before in action scenes, but it still rocks.

Marsden gets to be the everyman lead, and he becomes a bit more likable when he says he doesn’t want to kill anybody anymore (maybe he’ll rough somebody up a bit for Nick, he says meekly). But he is also having an affair with his wife which seems incredibly dumb. But there’s a flashback that shows Mike and Alice connecting, and it makes more sense they are together. The movie takes place over one night as the various parties and after parties for Jimmy Boy, and Tatro plays him as an overgrown manchild. Things get especially bad when he starts worrying about erectile dysfunction after a rant by Dumbass Tony (Arturo Castro) throws him off his game. Castro’s rant about ED is perfectly annoying and depressing, which bothers Jimmy Boy, until eventually he believes he has to kill Mike the rat so he can perform again. Lewis Tan has a supporting role as Roid Rage Ryan who seems nice or randomly freaks out. Veteran character actor Keith David as Sosa has some fun bits as he gets angry about the rat who sent his boy away. The craziest twist is the cannibal assassin, The Barron, who is sent to take out Mike permanently. Marsden shows Mike is freaked he might also be meal for this guy, and when Alice suggests hiding the cat Nick says “He’s a cannibal, not ALF!” The scene where the Barron arrives features actors like Stephen Root and Dolph Lundgren and interesting identity twists.

Overall, Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice is a sturdy buddy action crime mob flick with random but nifty time travel flourishes thrown in. There’s a great dual performance by Vaughn that is surprisingly layered, and keeping things lively, every few minutes there’s a hard hitting fight or gunfire. This is very enjoyably strange with unexpected dramatic payoffs.