‘Night Always Comes' Review: Vanessa Kirby Gets Put Through the Wringer in Netflix's Grim Neo-Noir Odyssey

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Set over the course of a single harrowing night and driven by a performance from Vanessa Kirby bristling with raw nervous energy, hunger and searing inner conflict, Netflix's Night Always Comes is more compelling than the average original streaming movie even if it could use an extra shot of emotional power. Adapted from the well-received novel by Willy Vlautin, the gritty neo-noir is high on atmosphere. But it's more attentive to the protagonist's spiraling desperation than the canvas of an ever-gentrifying America's unforgiving economic climate, diluting the social context of the book.
Reuniting with Benjamin Caron, one of her directors on The Crown, Kirby plays Lynette, who lives in her dilapidated childhood home in Portland with her developmentally disabled older brother Kenny (Zack Gottsagen) and their flaky mother Doreen (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who works for a grocery store chain. Their father took off some time back.
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Amid soaring housing prices, a cratering job market and escalating inflation, Lynette is trying to buy the house to give the family permanence and keep social services away from Kenny. 'I just want to have one win,' she says, encapsulating countless stories of working-class Americans living hand-to-mouth. Their landlord, David (J. Claude Deering), has cut them a deal to buy the house, which Lynette recognizes as their best — perhaps last — chance of stability. But she needs Doreen to cover the downpayment.
At first the film, adapted from Vlautin's novel by Sarah Conradt, plays like a character study of an emotionally and physically exhausted woman, shouldering much of the responsibility for Kenny's care with unreliable backup from her selfish mother.
Lynette juggles three jobs — working the assembly line at a commercial bakery, serving in a bar and turning occasional tricks with well-heeled businessman Scott (Randall Park). It gradually emerges that she has a violent past and a history of trauma from her teens, for which Doreen accepts no responsibility. Her attitude, echoed by others in the film, is that Lynette was wild in her youth, meaning she asked for whatever damage was inflicted on her.
The trigger for an all-night odyssey that switches gears into crime-thriller mode comes soon after Lynette's meeting with David to close on the house, at which her mother is a no-show. Instead, Doreen turns up a couple hours later with a new car, unapologetic about reneging on their agreement. 'I thought why not do something nice for myself once,' she says with a shrug, seemingly indifferent to the threat of eviction they face.
After failing to convince her mother to return the car to the dealership, Lynette sets out to raise the $25,000 by the following morning at 9 a.m., David's final extension. (The plot is basically One of Them Days without the comedy or daylight.) The time appears at intervals on the screen throughout the action, starting at 6:12 p.m.
In a strong scene that points to the cold remove of the moneyed class from those living on the poverty line, Lynette meets married family man Scott at the hotel where their assignations take place. He laughs at her request for help with the money, refusing to listen to her family troubles: 'I pay you to have a good time, not to hear about that stuff.' They move from the bar to a room anyway, after which Lynette pockets Scott's key fob and takes off in his wife's Mercedes.
At that point she's still incredulously asking herself what she's doing, but as the night wears on, any qualms Lynette has about resorting to crime steadily fade, at the risk of self-sabotage. She attempts to claim repayment on a loan to fellow escort Gloria (Julia Fox, playing trashy self-absorption to the hilt), who's set up in a swanky apartment by her high-powered john and is unsympathetic to her problems. But a safe containing fat wads of cash and a large cocaine stash presents an opportunity.
The filmmakers never judge Lynette as her actions grow more reckless, even when she's forced to pick up Kenny and take him along on a series of dangerous encounters.
She enlists help from her ex-con bar co-worker Cody (Stephan James); he takes her to see safecracker Drew (Sean Martini), who quickly turns menacing. Her next stop is to see Tommy (Michael Kelly), a sleazy figure from her past who stirs up disturbing memories. From there, she heads to the home of rich, hard-partying creep Blake (Eli Roth), where things turn ugly when he makes aggressive moves on her. As morning rolls around, there's no redemption for Lynette.
Caron, who in addition to The Crown has directed episodes of Andor and the Julianne Moore Apple TV+ movie Sharper, steers the action along with an assured hand, making good use of talented Mexican DP Damián García's inky location shooting and Brit composer Adam Janota Bzowski's correspondingly moody score. But a confrontation with Doreen near the end that becomes a self-reckoning for Lynette undersells the pathos. It perhaps doesn't help the emotional heft that Doreen is a character begging to be strangled.
The movie's most affecting moments are between Lynette and her brother, played with disarming cheerful innocence by Gottsagen and with alarming distress when Kenny is placed in tense situations.
Kirby, also one of the producers, deftly offsets Lynette's sharp edges with a haunted quality; as a vehicle for the skilled actress, Night Always Comes is certainly solid and always absorbing. But despite touching on the disparities of class, income and opportunity in America and the fragility — even futility — of hope for many people barely scraping by, the script's universal truths land with a soft impact.
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