It’s increasingly rare for major studio releases to feel…no, to be, genuinely transgressive. I remember seeing the trailers for Observe and Report in theaters and being stunned. The clip ends with a joke about Seth Rogen’s character potentially (probably?) committing date rape. Of course, that was just a prelude to the darkness the movie holds deep in its heart. Every so often I’ll rewatch the movie thinking that this is the time when I’ll realize the movie isn’t what I’ve always thought it to be. LIke clockwork, I put the movie on again and am gobsmacked all over again. Not only is it still great, but it’s proven itself to be uncanny in its prescience.
The movie follows mall security guard Ronnie (Rogen) as he takes it upon himself to catch the serial flasher terrorizing women at his mall. Ronnie suffers from mental illness, something the movie references throughout. Between Ronnie being open about his issues and proclivity for violence, he’s a genuinely dangerous character. That’s exacerbated by every other character’s refusal to take Ronnie seriously. Throughout the movie Ronnie talks about his medication, not taking said medication, his knowledge of firearms and his shooting abilities, his targeted harassment of people throughout the mall. Ronnie is a walking red flag.
But Ronnie’s just a mall cop so no one understands, or cares, how volatile he is. That thread runs throughout the movie. The audience is clued in early, which adds a layer of tension that continuously heightens. Jody HIll’s script does a really clever thing with this. When he reveals the horrific potential of Ronnie, in a hilariously horrifying encounter with a group of child drug dealers and their adult bosses, none of the main players are around to witness it. So when Ronnie storms into a police station with a young kid in tow and refers to the “6-10 dead crackheads” that can verify Ronnie’s story, the audience is left on the hook to decide if Ronnie actually massacred people, knowing full well that he’s capable of it.
Eventually the other characters catch up with the audience. That brings me to what I think is the ace up Observe and Report’s sleeve: Michael Peña and his performance as Dennis. Decked out with curly hair overflowing his head and a high pitched, sing-songy voice, Dennis is right there with Ronnie in terms of being an afterthought among the people in their daily orbit. But Dennis makes no bones about taking advantage of their situation in the most cynical way possible. In the highlight sequence of the movie, Dennis pulls back the curtain for Ronnie in a drug-fueled montage of them pummeling skateboarders, sneaking pictures of women in dressing rooms, and being general terrors.
“Sometimes, I drink out of a volcano.” That line, from Dennis, has been in my mind for 15 years. Aside from being ridiculous, it cuts right to the anarchic spirit the propels Observe and Report. When Dennis reveals that he is the one responsible for the recent string of robberies, it knocks Ronnie’s world askew. The movie is full of harsh reality checks for Ronnie, but none harsher than the realization that the thefts were happening right under his nose.
Back to Peña for a second. Affectations aside, his performance is electric. There are more boisterous characters in the movie and Peña consistently undercuts what the other actors are doing and he makes Dennis the guy everyone’s eyes go to every time he’s on screen. The movie has so much cynicism ruining through its veins, and leaves the audience in such a dark place that it’s almost a relief that Dennis gets away with everything.
Observe and Report is so aggressively off-putting that it dares viewers to turn on it. I’ve had plenty of conversations about the movie over the year and completely understand why someone wouldn’t care for it. But my affection for it has only gone up. The movie recently got a new blu-ray release from Shout that was the impetus for writing about it. It’s a release that only has one new special feature, a short-ish conversation with Hill that is fun and full of amusing tidbits. It’s worth picking up if you, like Ronnie, like to drink out of a volcano.
