Small Crimes. What would you give to start fresh?

Small Crimes is a 2017 crime thriller dark comedy directed by E.J. Katz and starring Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Robert Forster, Gary Cole, Jacki Weaver, and Molly Parker. The film follows Waldau's Joe, a corrupt cop who is released from a six year prison sentence for attempted murder. As he tries to rebuild his life, his past pulls him back to his old ways. As Michael Corleone said in The Godfather Part III: "Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in."
To me, Small Crimes' biggest strength is the cast of the film. Coster-Waldau was fantastic as Joe, making a character who should by all accounts have been despicable sympathetic. I felt for Joe and really felt like I understood his character. Molly Parker is also great as Joe's girlfriend Charlotte. She seemed very real and was probably the most likable character in the film. I really felt bad for her when bad things happened to her and was happy for her when good things happened. The rest of the cast, which is made up of mainly character actors, is also great. Every performance in the film was top notch and fit perfectly for what the film was trying to do.
I also want to give a lot of credit to the dialogue of the film written by writers Macon Blair (I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore.) and Katz himself. Not only was the dialogue smart and snappy, but it helped make the characters seem real. Also, the writers and actors perfectly and seamlessly created chemistry between these characters, making their connections feel strong and not forced. I really believed Joe and Charlotte's romance just as I really felt the three way tension between Joe, Robert Forster's Joe Sr., and Jacki Weaver's Irma.
Another major strength of the film is the editing. The film is absolutely perfectly paced, never feeling slow nor rushed. The film is given time to develop characters and plot lines, but not too much time to where they become stale. The film also never felt choppy as if parts of the film were crudely cut out for runtime reasons. For the entire hour and a half of the film, I was interested and completely oblivious to the outside world.
The final huge strength I want to mention is the question the film poses. While on the surface the film seems relatively straight forward, a question constantly arises throughout the film: is it possible to forget the past and go forward clean? Joe constantly remarks about how he wants to start fresh, however it seems that as often as he mentions this another problem arises, forcing him to not accomplish what he wants. What's really interesting about this is that I'm not sure if the film ever provides a concrete answer to the question. Personally, I don't think that is lazy filmmaking; I think it is thoughtful filmmaking that wants the audience to decide for themselves.
While I clearly very much enjoyed the film, it did suffer from a few problems, mainly a confusing tone and a sloppy and overused plot.
For the most part, the film has a very darkly comic tone to it, similar to films such as Pulp Fiction. The end, however, is incredibly dark and tragic, which feels very out of place with the rest of the film.  I do think that this was done intentionally as I've seen Cheap Thrills, another film by Katz that also has a confusing tone. That all said, I don't think it worked. This is a technique that is done often and rarely works and personally, I don't think it worked here.
The major problem with the film, however, is the plot. First of all, it's all over the place. Like The Discover, the film introduces random new plot threads well over half way into the film. The film also has about one hundred different engines all going at once, which sometimes made the film a little hard to follow. The biggest problem with the film, however, was just how cookie cutter the plot was. From the former felon who wants to live a good life to the "bad" dad with a heart of gold who wants to see his children to "if you don't kill so-and-so, you're going to prison," the film reuses plot threads that were redundant fifteen years ago. Of course, almost everything has been used in Hollywood at one point or another and the great films are the ones that can make these plots feel fresh again. Small Crimes does try valiantly, however it was just in vein.
Overall, I think Small Crimes is a very solid film and one that I would give a recommendation to others about. Of all the Netflix Original schlock out there (*cough* Adam Sandler *cough*), this is definitely one of the hidden gems. If you enjoy crime thrillers or just want to watch a solid film under two hours, I would definitely check it out.