True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto’s Easy’s Waltz focuses on a Vegas crooner, Easy (Vince Vaughn), who is offered a shot at the big time when an older star (Al Pacino) offers help, but will his old habits torpedo his last chance? Easy has the talent to make it big—but lacks the luck and the temperament. Between self-sabotage, keeping his reckless little brother Sam (Simon Rex) out of trouble with girls and grifts, managing a restaurant where drunken gamblers regularly harass the wait staff, and paying for his mother’s retirement home, Easy has his hands too full for ambition.
Easy’s Waltz has a stacked cast that also includes Kate Mara, Mary Steenburgen, Shane Gillis, Fred Melamed, and fellow Canadians Shania Twain and Cobie Smulders. Unfortunately, this ensemble was more filled with cameos than with developing each character. There were one or two plot holes scattered throughout the movie, especially when Monica (Smulders) said she was going to do something Easy asked her to do for him, but we never get to see what happened. Gillis and Twain were not in much of the movie, acting more as one-off characters.
Mara joined the Vaughan, Rex, and Pacino trio, having a more fleshed-out character. She did not bring anything special to her character as the love interest, compared to how she acts in most of her roles. However, the trio acted their minds out in this movie. Rex played the naive, down-on-his-luck brother role well by ultimately making things worse.
The brotherly chemistry between Rex and Vaughan’s characters was hot and cold at times—faltering when they were acting like business partners. Their strong moments were when they were passionately trying to explain to one another where each of them was coming from, and about their childhood. Sadly, it takes two acts to reach these great moments in the film, rather than sprinkling intimate moments throughout the movie.
As for Pacino’s Mickey Albano, he brought out the big guns in Easy’s Waltz—not a Scarface joke. He plays the notorious casino and club owner role superbly, still as fearsome as he was in his iconic kingpin role as Tony Montana. Something about Pacino’s acting always works when he is the boss. While Pacino is more tame in this movie, he maintains that grit and look that screams, ‘you’ll be swimming with the fishes tonight.’
“Easy’s Waltz dips into some thrilling, edge-of-your-seat moments, but the score fails to back it up…”
While Vaughan is not a hugely physical actor, he makes up for it in witty line deliveries and plays a tall, lovable goofball who sometimes makes mistakes. He tends to take on the underdog role, whether that is in Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story or Apple TV+’s Bad Monkey. Playing Easy worked in Vaughan’s favour; the singing parts were a big surprise.
Never in a million years would I have thought Vaughan could sing the way he does in this film, but do not expect him to sound like Tony Bennet or Adele. Vaughan’s voice worked for him, and Pizzolatto gave him the spotlight. Easy’s Waltz had a lot of singing and music, where Vaughan is singing on stage, never shying away from putting Vaughan in the singing spotlight.
Easy’s Waltz left me pondering: what was the central theme of the movie? Was it about two brothers overcoming their childhood traumas? Was it about taking the right risks? It is hard to say with this movie because of the ending. I was left unsatisfied with the potential open ending, but sort of knew what was going to happen. However, there was something in its execution that did not drive home a clear goal or message.
When the credits rolled, I could think of a few themes it touched on, but nothing to say that the two brothers came out of the whole experience learning something new about each other. Maybe it was about being trapped in one’s childhood trauma for their whole lives, and some people cannot escape their situations. If so, that is a pretty nihilistic way of looking at life.
Strangely, the score was inconsistently placed throughout this film. Easy’s Waltz dips into some thrilling, edge-of-your-seat moments, but the score fails to back it up, lessening the tension and stakes in those high-pressure situations. In the beginning, Easy speaks with Mickey, and you can hear their clothes rustling fairly loudly—requiring some soft instrumentals to detract from the noise other than the actors’ voices. Using Vaughan’s singing parts for montage or transition shots was smart, though.
The last bit of praise for this flick is its colour palette. There is a scene where Easy and Sam are going to Mickey’s casino and club, and they have different coloured suits on to represent their differences as characters. Even when they were on the phone with one another in the first act, the Vegas lighting cast down on one of them in blue and the other in red. These details may be small, but they add to the visual storytelling in thoughtful ways—sometimes emphasizing the characters’ moods.
Easy’s Waltz took a major swing with having Vaughan as the lead actor and singer of the movie, and it paid off for the story. The thrill of the film reeled me in, although I was confused about the overall message of the narrative. This was a film that contained multitudes of heart and passion for the Las Vegas entertainment industry, and I can appreciate entertainers a bit more now. For audiences wanting to know a look inside a Vegas entertainer’s life/lives, Easy’s Waltz has enough to get you on the dance floor.
