There's nothing, per se, wrong with a first-time director wearing their influences on their sleeve; what matters is their ability to then go beyond imitating others and develop a voice of their own. Unfortunately, Kick-Ass and Hot Tub Time Machine actor Clark Duke never quite gets there with his feature debut on Arkansas, an idiosyncratic neo-noir that plays out like a cross between the Coen Brothers (specifically, Fargo) and Tarantino's movies from the '90s. On paper, its plot has all the ingredients it needs to make this mashup of creative styles work (sardonic tone, non-linear structure divided into chapters, low-level lawbreakers who aren't as clever as they fancy themselves to be), yet it just doesn't come together. Arkansas struggles to find an internal rhythm - resulting in a laid-back crime film that suffers from flat execution, in spite of some bright spots.

Adapted from the 2009 novel by John Brandon, the film starts off by introducing Kyle Ribb (Liam Hemsworth), a jaded young drug runner from the South who works for a mysterious man know simply as Frog. Upon meeting with another dealer, the cocky and talkative Swin Horn (Duke), to deliver a truckload of product, the pair encounter Bright (John Malkovich), an easygoing ranger who claims to answer directly to Frog and informs them they will now work alongside him at a state park in Arkansas, as a cover for their actual job. But when one of their deliveries comes back to bite them, Kyle and Swin decide to hide their tracks, keep their heads down, and hope the whole thing blows over.

From there, Arkansas jumps back in time to 1985 to reveal how Frog (Vince Vaughn) got roped into the drug business and juxtapose his rise to kingpin status with Kyle and Swin's dark comedy of errors in the present, as a way of showing how they're all drawn into cycles of violence. For the most part, though, these flashbacks don't add a lot to the film and deflate the tension as the stakes are heightened in the second half. There's nothing all that unexpected about the way these storylines unfold either; what few twists they throw in aren't enough to allow Arkansas to subvert the tropes of its genre the way Tarantino's early crime films did. And unlike the Coens, Duke and his co-writer Andrew Bookrong don't achieve the sense of irony they seem to be going for with this tale of off-kilter "deadbeats and scumbags" (as Kyle, who also serves as the movie's narrator, calls them). Whereas something like Fargo is both sharply satirical and thrilling, Arkansas - sadly - is never really either one.


When it comes to its direction, Arkansas similarly lacks personality and tends to move from scene to scene (be it a montage of people quietly exchanging drugs or a sudden outburst of graphic violence) in a perfunctory fashion, never fully achieving the slow and steady beat it's going for. At the same time, Duke's a native of Arkansas and imbues the film with a sense of visual authenticity in the glimpses we're given of the region, which he and DP Steven Meizler paint in fittingly drab colors. The characters, on the other hand, tend to be either one-note quirky or serious, be it Vivica A. Fox as Frog's middleman "Her" or Eden Brolin as Johanna, a young nurse who begins a romance with Swin that just never rings true (even in the movie's strange universe). Malkovich brings some much-needed color as the cheerfully wicked Bright, but otherwise the people of Arkansas tend to be memorable because of the name actors who play them, more than anything they say or do.

It's a shame Arkansas wasn't able to premiere at this year's SXSW as it was meant to, prior to the festival being cancelled in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. There might be a niche audience out there (one that could've found it via SXSW) that would better take to the movie's off-beat tempo and appreciate its attempts to blend the sensibilities of the Coen Brothers with the stylings of Tarantino. For everyone else, this low-energy thriller will probably come off as too half-baked and derivative for its own good, and primarily succeed in reminding you of the '90s classics it wants to emulate. With everyone stuck at home right now, you might just want to revisit those films (or maybe even watch them for the first time) instead.

Arkansas becomes available on Apple, Amazon, On Demand Platforms, Blu-ray and DVD on Tuesday, May 5. It is 115 minutes long and is rated R for violence, language throughout, drug material and brief nudity.