Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Nicholas Tomnay
Starring: Nick Stahl, Tamsin Topolski, Randy Vasquez, Penelope Mitchell, Juan
Carlos Messier, Brian Groh
Too handsome for a character actor, too craggy for a matinee idol,
Nick Stahl has spent much of his acting career trying to find his
niche. With last year's
What Josiah Saw
and now writer/director Nicholas Tomnay's
What You Wish For, it seems Stahl has finally found his feet, reinventing himself as a
modern day Tom Neal. Neal was a star of 1940s b-movies whose good looks
were offset by a hangdog demeanour. His most famous role was in Edgar G.
Ulmer's noir masterpiece Detour, in which Neal played a down on his luck man who assumes the identity
of a dead man only to almost regret doing so when "fate sticks out its
foot to trip him up."
Stahl plays a man in a similar situation in Tomnay's film. In debt to
loan sharks due to his gambling habit, Stahl's Ryan travels to an
unnamed Latin American country to meet up with Jack (Brian Groh),
whom he hasn't seen since the two studied at culinary school together 12
years ago. While Ryan has ended up cooking "a lot of roast chickens" in
a Dallas chain hotel, Jack is a highly sought after chef, paid
considerable sums to give diners an "extraordinary experience" in scenic
locations around the world. Passing by his laptop, Ryan sees that Jack
has over a million dollars in his bank account.
Jack's latest gig sees him staying at a mansion with orders to prepare
the produce for an upcoming meal attended by a group of hungry elites.
When Ryan expresses his jealousy, Jack swats it away, claiming his life
isn't all it appears. Clearly not, as the following morning Ryan awakes
to find his friend hanging from the rafters. Rather than calling the
relevant authorities, Jack sits down and has a think. Just a fraction of
Jack's money could end all his troubles, and it's no good to Jack now,
right? Ordering a fake ID from a dodgy dark web site, Ryan begins posing
as Jack with the aim of accessing his bank account and paying off the
loan sharks whose threats have at this point escalated, claiming they
know where Ryan's mother lives.
Before the ID arrives however, Ryan finds himself in the presence of
Jack's employers, represented by the business-like Imogene (Tamsin Topolski) and her suspiciously burly assistant Maurice (Juan Carlos Messier). Posing as Jack, Ryan manages to get an advance of $50,000, and is
stunned to learn he can earn another $250,000 for cooking the meal. This
is no ordinary meal however, and Ryan finds his morals compromised as he
seeks a way out of a situation he never could have foreseen.
With the set-up in place, the movie's second half centres on the meal
in question, playing out like a macabre episode of
Fawlty Towers as Ryan juggles keeping himself alive by
preparing the menu to his new employers' liking with dodging the
questions of a prying police detective (Randy Vasquez)
investigating the disappearance of a local man. Topolski's very British
portrayal of a social climbing middle manager sees Imogene in the Basil
role as she attempts to keep the increasingly fraught situation from
exploding. Things aren't helped when a risk-loving guest insists the
detective stay for the dinner so he can feed off the adrenalin of the
scenario.
Any decent person should be backing the detective, but a good filmmaker
knows how to make us empathise with bad people. The shift in identity
here is akin to the second half of Hitchcock's
Psycho, in which we sweat for Norman Bates as he's probed by prying
intruders. Imogene may be evil incarnate and Ryan might have compromised
his morals in the worst fashion possible, but we still find ourselves
cringing every time they make a slip-up that might clue the detective
into what's really going on here.
There's some delicious irony at play here. Ryan finds himself in a
nightmarish scenario, yet it also offers him the chance to live his
dream of preparing the meal of his life. Stahl brilliantly conveys this
duality, swapping back and forth between sweaty desperation and
professional pride. Equally cruel and ironic is how it's the working
class detective who appreciates Ryan's meal on a level the rich guests
seem incapable of. For the diners it's more about being able to speak
about the experience at a later time, while for the detective it's
solely about enjoying the experience in the moment.
What You Wish For is also a workplace drama and a
commentary on the stranglehold our jobs can take over our lives.
Injected in the throat with a GPS tracker, Ryan's life is now controlled
by his employers. This feeling of being unable to escape a job is one
many viewers will empathise with, along with the idea of having to
compromise your morals at the behest of your employer. On the other hand
there's Maurice, who's just happy to have a job and seems to relish his
grisly work. "The reward should match the atrocity," a character remarks
at one point. At least Ryan is well rewarded financially for
compromising himself. How many workers can make such a claim?
