Enzo’s life is nothing too spectacular. He works days at his uncle’s salon, while trying to save up enough money to go back to school. When his uncle offers to pay for a year of Enzo’s school in exchange for a simple favor, Enzo jumps at the chance. The job sounds simple enough; Enzo’s uncle is having several cases of a very effective – albeit illegal – tanning lotion shipped in from Australia, and wants Enzo to go pick it up for him. Lured by the promise of furthering his education, Enzo enlists the help of four friends to come along with him. But things are not quite as they seem, and this simple task soon becomes far more complex – and dangerous – than any of the boys can imagine.
Content
It’s a fairly conventional gangster film plot – someone is sent on a simple assignment to pick up drugs or smuggled art for a gang leader, and somehow everything goes to hell. What makes this film so different, and rather interesting, is that none of the protagonists in this film are a part of any kind of underworld gang. They are five rather arrogant young men, who fancy themselves as real badasses, but haven’t really got a clue about the way the “real world” operates. This adds a nice twist to a rather conventional story, and leads to both some humorous instances, as well as some points of tension.
Perhaps the best part of Tan Man was the acting. The principal characters did an excellent job, and the numerous minor roles were also quite impressive. In indie films, extras and walk-ons are usually a more neglected area, but that was not the case for Tan Man. I also really liked the ending, and the way nothing was completely tied up, but simply left open-ended. Had these filmmakers attempted to tie it up in a neat package, the film would’ve definitely suffered. The part of this film that I found the funniest was at the beginning when Enzo and his friend Troy are having lunch, and Enzo’s uncle calls. Troy immediately begins to yell expletives at the top of his lungs, and make all kinds of funny faces in order to distract Enzo. This happens to me all the time, and I just had to laugh.
Though this film was billed as a comedy, I didn’t really find it all that humorous (aside from the part I just mentioned).
Now, before I go into the issues this film had, I need to explain something. I am not your normal chick. I love the supposedly misogynistic Fight Club and the very male-based Swingers; I am a fan of the perpetually obscene and smutty Kevin Smith and his movies; I love the politically incorrect comedy of Carlos Mencia; and I’ve never failed to laugh at the antics of the female-blistering Chris Rock. As such, I am not a chick that is easily offended.
With that said, the dialogue in this film makes it possibly the most offensive film I have ever seen. It makes all the deleted scenes from every Kevin Smith movie seem like exerpts from Bambi. It makes the worst lyrics of 2 Live Crew seem like children’s nursery rhymes. We’ve never reviewed a film that should have been NC-17 due to nudity, yet this film would easily be rated far above the NC-17 rating on dialogue alone. In fact, it actually blows past the NC-17 threshold in the first six minutes of the film.
When I talk about NC-17 dialogue, am I talking about a bunch of guys chatting about how long it takes them or their partner to get off? Or how good a girl is in the sack? Not really. While that is covered in the constant sexual commentary of the main characters, it is a small part of it. Much of the sexual commentary blasts right past normal sexual experience, and into the realm of pretty twisted kinks like having a partner toss your salad, defecating on your partner, and a list of other things that I’m not going to even mention here.
