SUCKERS: Cheap Cars And Cheap Souls
Few things can make your skin crawl like trying to buy acar at a car dealership. The process is as close to a criminal enterprise asbusiness laws allow: the prospective buyer is sweet-talked, subjected tobait-and-switch tactics, blindsided by price changes and "extras,"etc. From start to finish, the "negotiation" process involvesout-and-out lies by the salespeople and managers. You know you're going to becheated when you walk in and you just try your best to minimize the damage youknow you're going to suffer.
Suckers isa film devoted to exploring that experience, primarily from the point of viewof the people perpetrating the hustle. Our entrance into this labyrinth oflegal crime is aligned with the viewpoint of Bobby (Louis Mandylor), a lucklessnewlywed whose wife Donna (Lori Loughlin) works at a used car dealership. Hetakes a job there to appease her and rebuild their finances. He quickly findshimself in the employ of Reggie (Daniel Benzali), the gleeful sleaze who managesthe dealership. He's an expert at hustling the rubes and aggressively pusheshis staff to cheat the customers in every way to extract the maximum number ofdollars.
With the help of friendly middle manager Eddie (Michael D. Roberts), Bobby learns the ropes and soon becomes proficient at the used car hustle. He's extra motivated to succeed and earn bonuses because he's secretly in hock to a pair of loansharks (including David Allan Brooks from Scream For Help) who turn their covetous eyes towards his place of work. There's also some sort of extracurricular criminal activity going on at night in the dealership's mechanic shop...
Suckers isthe work of Roger Nygard, who in recent years has become a successful editor onshows like Curb Your Enthusiasm and Veep. However, around the time of thisfilm, he was best known for his comedic documentary Trekkies. He brings that kind of verite style and snappy energy to Suckers: the opening titles sequence,which depicts a salesman breaking down a customer to sign a contract withdouble-talk and manipulation, is a great example of the film's jittery rhythmsand darkly humorous insights into the used car hustle.
Nygard populates Suckerswith an array of colorful characters and entertaining vignettes. For example,one of Bobby's fellow salesmen is Mohammed (Eli Danker), a former Afghansoldier with a unique motivation for pursuing fast cash at the dealership andthere's a pretty funny sequence involving a naive young salesman findinghimself seduced by a prospective customer.
The script, co-written by Nygard with Joe Yannetty, doesa convincing job of laying out the crooked sales techniques that fuel thedealership's success. It also is effective at creating a satirical tone thatframes the "cheat or be cheated" mentality of its setting: the bigachievement lies in the pre-work day pep talks that Reggie gives to his staff,using humor and alpha energy to rev them up for fleecing the customers.
That said, Suckersalso has a crime movie element that comes to dominate the film's third act. Thecharacters and situations that drive that side of the film are less interestingthan the car salesmanship and don't really compliment the humorous butplausible car dealership side. They also lead the film into a rather abruptfinale that is a bit too pat and lightweight for its own good.
Those issues aside, Suckersremains a breezy and frequently funny watch. Nygard doesn't go in for a lot ofcinematic flash in his visuals, choosing to let the script and characters drivethe narrative instead, but he's quite skilled at using editing to maintain anaggressive tempo that reflects the pressure of its main setting. He also gets anumber of strong performances: Mandylor makes a likeable audience surrogate,one that's subtle enough in this outlandish setting to keep us sympathetic, andBenzali makes a meal out of every brash, Mamet-esque spiel he gets here.Danker, better known for his work in action films, is funny and unexpectedlymoving in a few surprise drama beats.
Simply put, Suckersis a bit rough around the edges but more often than not that aspect of theproduction compliments its portrait of legalized crime. Besides, it's wellworth a look for anyone who's about to walk the gauntlet of a car dealership sothey can learn what goes on when their salesman goes to "talk to the manager."
Blu-Ray Notes: this just got an excellent blu-ray edition from Synapse Films. It boasts a sleek transfer and a 5.1 stereo remix plus a commentary and some outtake footage. Even better, you get an entire extra film, Six Days In Roswell, with its own batch of extras - that film alone is worth the price of admission.