Usually we champion a film director when they return to their indie/small-budget roots after a less-than-perfect blockbuster left them rather maligned, hoping that it’ll be the chance for them to get out of their creative rut. Unfortunately, it seems David Ayer is still stuck in that trench. The Tax Collector, the new Los Angeles crime drama starring Bobby Soto and Shia LaBeouf, sees Ayer treading ground that isn’t just familiar but worn down to dirt. The end result is a tepid thriller that doesn’t do much for anyone beyond offering a middling distraction.
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David (Soto) lives a comfortable life in his Los Angeles mansion with his wife Alexis (Cinthya Carmona) and their three children. He is both a family man and a man of God – doting on his children and loving on Alexis whenever he gets a spare minute, but never ignorant to praise the Almighty for his successful career. That career, of course, is acting as an enforcer – or “tax collector” – for the local crime lord known as The Wizard (Jimmy Smits) while he’s serving out a prison sentence. David and his partner, known only as “Creeper” (LaBeouf), patrol the majority Hispanic/Latinx neighborhood’s gangs, collecting each gang’s dues for continued. Despite the threat of violence always looming on the horizon David feels a sense of security in his job – both financially, but also morally, as he views it as an extension of his familial duties to look out for everyone’s safety…even if that means with a bit of tough love. (David’s uncle [George Lopez] points this out directly, commenting that everyone’s scared of him and Creeper because they look like “a couple of monsters”.) But when one of the Wizard’s old nemeses, Conejo (Jose Conejo Martin), returns to L.A. from Mexico, David’s stability is thrown out of whack. Conejo, backed by the violent force of the Mexican cartel, starts annexing local gangs for his own control. David tries to amicably decline Conejo’s offer of partnership, but the new kingpin isn’t taking “no” for an answer. Soon those loyal to the Wizard are being taken out, putting David on the run to protect his family (and the remains of his business) before they all meet a bloody fate. Many have assumed The Tax Collector would be Ayer’s supposed return to form, after his detours into the war, superhero, and fantasy genres with Fury, Suicide Squad, and Bright, respectively. Gone are the big budgets and high-concept set pieces while Ayer’s grit and grime of the Los Angeles crime world remain, adding if nothing else a fair amount of texture to the narrative. But it would appear that some of those prior films’ detractors still got held over. Much like Suicide Squad, many of The Tax Collector’s ideas and various threads never go anywhere. What’s seemingly going to be the film’s primary conflict – and a more internal/existential one of identity and in-fighting, at that – is dropped right after the first act to make way for a more materialist one about turf wars. Conejo’s burgeoning takeover pushes David’s identity crisis arc towards the fray, which is only ever sporadically signaled to throughout the rest of the film’s short 95-minute runtime via tedious monologues on family, love, and religious faith. Even other strange elements – such as Conejo’s “prep” scene, which suddenly teeters into the realms of occult-like horror, or Ayer’s penchant for quick bursts of excessive, bloody violence – are never explored, brought up again, nor utilized for anything beyond random shock. It’s not that the existences of these themes and stylistic choices are bad, but both Ayer’s writing and direction is so brash in portraying them that they can’t be excused simply as ambiguously adding to the story’s aesthetics. Even a choice as simple as not including subtitles for the Spanish-language portions doesn’t really work as a meaningful obfuscation for the purpose of mystery, which is something The Quarry (ironically another Soto starrer) did with much success. All the “family” and “love” reminders that David and his crew constantly bombard the audience with – not to mention the film’s Los Angeles setting – makes it easy to compare to the equally-surface-level writing of the Fast and Furious franchise (the first of which Ayer is actually credited as one of the screenwriters). But while those films are low-hanging fruits to ridicule for their overblown excessiveness they never try to be anything more than that, and their themes of family and teamwork – however banal you may personally feel they play – still come off as genuine and unironic from those filmmakers themselves. In a way, it keeps the franchise emotionally grounded when their action is otherwise defying gravity. The Tax Collector’s insistence on these thematic threads but its simultaneous lack of expansion on them – coupled with the film’s deadly-serious tone overall – doesn’t make its emotional core feel genuine at all. That’s not to say Ayer’s portrayal of these themes is ironic, but his air of importance morphs such sentiments into clichés more than anything else. Coupled with the film’s lack of cognizance about its overwhelming aura of toxic machismo, it plays like the embodiment of a bygone era of filmmaking – unaware of postmodern analysis or even parody that’s manifested within the interim. The aforementioned short runtime makes one wonder if there’s really a Godfather-like epic crime saga buried within this film’s folds, and if Ayer wasn’t given the ability to allow it the elbow room it needed. Or, conversely, maybe this really was just a painfully simple gangster movie, and Ayer added all these flourishes and threads in a last-minute attempt to make it seem more worthy of our attention. Overall, it’s not that the film is unwatchable, but rather that it’s so boring that you have to wonder why you’d want to watch it in the first place. For a filmmaker’s seventh directorial effort this feels instead like a first or second one, with little to no flair beyond the down-and-dirty crime affectations (and most of the set-pieces fully embodying that ethos are just okay, at best). Lopez and LaBeouf, despite their commitment, aren’t in this for very long (and even so it’s worth interrogating whether LaBeouf’s accent and presence as the only white guy in an otherwise Latinx/Hispanic cast borders on racial stereotyping). Soto could be better, yet it’s not that he’s an incapable performer but rather one who’s stifled by the material and direction. He’s so constricted to the tough guy persona that the bits of movie star charm and manic charisma he seems capable of exuding are only ever allowed solitary peeks. And let’s not forget both the opening and closing credits that play very much like some student’s After Effects final, starting and ending the film on a gaudy tone. For the curious I’d implore you to pick another gig, because this one’s payout isn’t worth it. Rating: 4/10 Leave your thoughts on this The Tax Collector review and the film below in the comments section. Readers seeking to support this type of content can visit our Patreon Page and become one of FilmBook’s patrons. Readers seeking more film reviews can visit our Movie Review Page and our Movie Review Pinterest Page. Want up-to-the-minute notifications? FilmBook staff members publish articles by Email, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Flipboard.
