Big Gold Brick is a movie that is perhaps better and more fully realized in its creator's mind, but unfortunately has manifested onscreen in a perplexing manner that is devoid of reason. Admittedly, what draws viewers into the film is the promise of a zany story about a down-on-his-luck writer hired to write the biography of an enigmatic man named Floyd. Megan Fox and Andy Garcia take up the top half of the film's poster, with the booked and busy Oscar Issac in a monocle in the second half despite barely being in the film at all. Writer-director Brian Petsos' Big Gold Brick promises something idiosyncratic and darkly whimsical, but the execution betrays this vision completely. What is left is a hodgepodge ensemble of actors who could have used their talents elsewhere.
The downtrodden alcoholic writer Samuel (Emory Cohen) is at his wit's end when he decides to pack up and leave. As he walked down a dark road, he may or may not have intentionally stood in front of Floyd’s (Andy Garcia) oncoming vehicle and got hit. By some strange turn of events, Samuel becomes Floyd’s biographer. Interlaced with Samuel’s monotonous recounting of his experience with Floyd is a means of toying with the idea of being serious — as a whole, however, the movie is anything but. Petsos plays with the idea of unreliable narrators and the sense of a tilted reality with playful use of the camera and imagery to indicate Samuel’s loose grip on reality.
However, for all that these tricks are worth, the movie remains impenetrable. It is hard to get a sense of what Petsos is aiming to achieve, and the result is a film that flounders about for two hours, which is far too long. Emory Cohen is perhaps the only person playing into the tone of the film. Unfortunately, nobody else is on his level, which makes him look like the odd one out. Cohen is following Petsos’ direction to the letter, but the ensemble around him is deathly stale and their performances feel like they belong in an entirely different story. Megan Fox’s deadpan comedy is an underutilized talent that, time and time again, is wasted in films that undermine her gift and focus primarily on her appearance.
Big Gold Brick does not break this frustrating tradition. Essentially, the characters — excluding Samuel — are meant to be intriguing; they are meant to stand out as these larger-than-life people that warrant mention in Floyd's biography, but Petsos fumbles the execution. Big Gold Brick is, at best, incomprehensible and, at worst, undeniably dull. The effort to understand what is being presented to the audience is too much to even ask of them. There is a sense of whimsy and dark humor that is the undercurrent of the script, but a lackluster eye for visuals fails to accentuate any of it.
The story requires a dazzling approach, from the character's presentation to their dialogue to the world they inhabit, but everything in the film just falls flat. Big Gold Brick is the furthest thing from gold. With 30 minutes left to spare, the film switches gears to become what it should have been for the majority of its runtime. The final half hour of the film is also the point in which Oscar Isaac suddenly appears, with a strangely accented villain portrayal that is more at home in an Austin Powers movie. The lingering lesson in all of this is Megan Fox deserves better and Big Gold Brick is a solid turd of a movie.
Big Gold Brick releases in theaters, on demand, and digital on Friday, February 25. The film is 132 minutes long and is not rated.
