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When I first saw the trailers for Next Day Air, I wasn’t sure what to think of it. Was it supposed to be a zany comedy? An urban crime thriller? An action film? And even now, after seeing it, I’m still not so sure.
Next Day Air delivery guy Leo (Donald Faison) is about to lose his job for smoking pot while delivering packages. One more screw-up, and his boss (who also happens to be his mom) will fire him. Still, that doesn’t stop him—and, in his chemically-altered state, he ends up delivering a package to the wrong apartment.
As Jesus (Cisco Reyes), the rightful recipient, frantically searches for his package, the incompetent small-time crooks who live across the hall open the box and find 10 bricks of cocaine. Thinking it’s some kind of divine intervention—God’s way of improving their lot in life—they call Shavoo (Omari Hardwick), a paranoid drug dealer who’s having second thoughts about his chosen profession.
Convinced that the Next Day Air delivery guy is to blame, Jesus goes in search of Leo, while his boss—a California tough guy known as Bodega Diablo (Emilio Rivera)—hops on a plane to recover what’s rightfully his.
Next Day Air is a crazy, complex adventure—in the vein of films like Smokin’ Aces or Guy Ritchie’s RocknRolla—only with an urban twist. Though the concept is becoming a bit of a cliché, it can still make for a thrilling (and wildly entertaining) film—if it’s done well. Unfortunately, though, Next Day Air isn’t done all that well.
Perhaps the film’s greatest problem is that it lacks subtlety. This kind of film tends to have its own kind of subtle dark humor to keep things interesting—but the humor in Next Day Air has all the subtlety of an elephant in a tutu. Some of the jokes fall painfully flat, and others are so ridiculously over-the-top that they seem completely out of place. There are a few scenes that work really well, but, for the most part, the writing is uneven—sometimes hokey and slapstick, sometimes dead serious—and those rough edges simply needed to be smoothed out a bit more.
At the same time, though, the cast doesn’t help. Many of the actors half-heartedly stumble (or mumble) their way through their lines, while other performances are totally overdone. Perhaps some of that could be attributed to the inexperience of a first-time director, while some of the blame lies with the sound editing—since the background music often drowns out the dialogue. But, whatever the case, it all works together to make the film less than convincing.
So while the film’s concept is pretty clever—and the urban-Philly twist could have made it feel fresh—Next Day Air shows that a good idea can only get you so far. It’s a solid attempt by rookie director Benny Boom—and I’m sure this won’t be the last you hear from him—but the finished project just misses the mark.
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