Watching the extremely dark comedy Chili Finger, you have to believe directors Edd Benda and Stephen Helstad wanted to grow up to become the Coen brothers.
This movie set in Nekoosa, Wisconsin, is right out of the Blood Simple/Fargo playbook, even to the point of recruiting a Coens favorite, John Goodman, for a key role. It is all based loosely, as the title card indicates, on a real-life incident in which a woman found a human finger in her bowl of chili at a fast-food restaurant. From that starting point. Helstad ran wild with his imagination in crafting this twisty story.
Jessica Lipky (Judy Greer) and her lumbering husband Ron (Sean Astin) are about to become empty nesters as they send their only daughter, Kris (Shaya Harris), off to college. This parental rite of passage also has left them so broke they can’t even afford to visit her, despite Jess’ job as a lawyer in the small suburban town in which they live. We see she does a lot of pro bono work, struggling to get paid by small-time clients. We aren’t sure what Ron does, but he enjoys going to his favorite restaurant, Juniors, and that is where, to her shock, Jess discovers a human finger in her chili.
The restaurant immediately shuts down to investigate, and soon in walks Blake Jr. II (Madeline Wise), daughter of owner Blake Jr. (Goodman), and now a key executive in her father’s business. She offers several free coupons for future meals, which Ron is thrilled about, but being the lawyer she is, Jess sniffs a bigger payoff and demands $10,000 not to take it to the local paper and spill all. She gets it, but Ron, suddenly with some cajones, demands the coupons also and ups the deal to $100,000 or no-go.
The funny thing is, all this guy really wanted was the coupons and to be able to continue having his weekly men’s club dinners at Juniors. Nevertheless, fearing the worst and the danger of threatening the restaurant’s expansion to Minnesota, Blake Jr. II gets dad to agree, but he insists on delivering the cash himself.
Also not quite content that there isn’t more to the story, his best friend — gun-toting ex-Marine Dave, a bit of a fixer for him — decides to investigate personally and stumbles on a much more involved trail that soon involves a complicated relationship with a factory worker named Trevor (Paul Stanko), his very pregnant wife Nia (Sarah Herrman) and, yes, Jess. Uh-oh, trouble lies ahead, and lots of violence too (remember this is right out of the Coens playbook).
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We won’t spoil the fun any further, but Benda and Helstad got lucky with the casting because this team of pros raise the material — if not quite to the level of what the Coens could do with this sort of thing (and I wish they would return to it rather than some of their recent projects, together and apart) but in a highly entertaining and fun movie anyway. Greer keeps it all grounded as a mother desperate for enough money even to visit Kris and finds herself in a dicey situation careening out control. Astin plays contented cluelessness to perfection, a decent guy with no ambition who would have been happy with a coupon but is thrust into something way over his head. Cranston gets a delicious character turn with handlebar ‘stache and good intuition to jump into the fray, and Goodman’s icy determination to preserve his business is right on point. Wise also is very good as the more practical business partner who just wants to keep this out of the headlines at all costs. Stanko and Herrman nail the small-town nobodies who smell the kind of money they never had, even at the cost of a finger.
Chili Finger doesn’t rewrite the rules, but with a cast having a blast, it modestly provides a good ol’ time.
Producers are Sam Sandweiss, Jo Henrique
Title: Chili Finger
Festival: SXSW (Narrative Spotlight)
Directors: Edd Benda and Stephen Helstad
Screenwriter: Stephen Helstad
Cast: Judy Greer, Sean Astin, Bryan Cranston John Goodman, Madeline Wise, Paul Stanko, Sarah Herrman, Sara Sevigny, Dann Florek, Shaya Harris
Running time: 1 hr 40 mins
Sales agent: Gersh