It looks unfortunately like the great Morgan Freeman is ending his career with a whimper. After the dreadful Vanquish recently, he’s slumming once again in a distinctly sub-par noir thriller that clearly hopes his very presence will bestow gravitas, and perhaps some attention on the crowded streaming market. As you would expect, he’s a lugubrious authority figure complete with his patented world-weary voiceover, but The Minute You Wake up Dead is so far below the best examples of his quietly dignified, authoritative persona that it hardly seems the same artform, let alone the same actor. A misfiring, haphazardly-plotted scrap of small-town pulp, it’s replete with characters and performances so inconsequential that even the protagonists that find themselves at the end of a gun barrel hardly seem to care.
The Minute You Wake up Dead revolves around large sums of money. Stockbroker Russ (Cole Hauser) is persona non grata in his town after the collapse of a mooted merger that leaves him and various investors heavily out of pocket. The only person who doesn’t seem to be after his blood is attractive waitress Delaine (Jaimie Alexander). As the pair get close, she herself is waiting for the insurance windfall from her father’s murder; a murder which was possibly bodged and had Russ as the intended target. Freeman is the sheriff investigating the case.
It’s clear from the title, the melancholic narration, and its backwoods setting of deep-fried Americana that Michael Mailer and co-writer Timothy Holland are aiming for an early-Coen brothers type neo-noir, with extra nods to later works like No Country for Old Men. But constant narrative curveballs and fire-and-brimstone religious fixations don’t work when there are no characters worth caring about. Practically every protagonist is a rote villain who spends way too much of their time telling their victims just how they’ve been villainous. The writers seem to have confused two-faced with two-dimensional and the doom-laden script takes itself too seriously for any of the actors to even indulge in a spot of moustache twirling. As far as both storytelling and execution goes, it’s all about as explosive as Scarborough’s New Year’s Eve fireworks.
If The Minute You Wake up Dead was likely to gain any attention in the wider cultural context it might be a sure-fire contender for worst film of the year. As it is, any ire can be more constructively directed as awards season looms. There are bound to be any number of bloated Oscar bait travesties that deserve disdain far more than a little indie that fails to be a patch on the great films it seeks to emulate. It might be of some interest for the presence of a sadly slightly frail-looking Morgan Freeman, but is nothing else than evidence of a brilliant career guttering out. An absolute dandelion clock of a movie.
Available on streaming from Mon 9 Jan 2023