NEXT DAY AIR

With more than a little nod to Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie's collective school of filmmaking, Next Day Air still manages to be an entertaining bloodbath of criminal ineptitude.

I had absolutely no expectation when I saw Next Day Air. Except, I have to admit the title had me curious. You may thing the movie*pie brings home the bacon, but in fact I have a “real” job to pay the bills, and this job works specifically with shipping companies. How could I not see a movie that featured a stoner delivery driver as one of the main characters?

Always adorable and funny Donald Faison plays Leo, said stoner delivery driver, who smokes pot on his rounds, defends himself against his cranky mother (Debbie Allen) who happens to be his boss, and hangs out with his co-worker buddy Eric (Mos Def) who freely opens up boxes with a box cutter and takes whatever he finds interesting. (Oh, I don’t want to know how much of this sort of thing is true!). On this day, Leo delivers a huge box to the wrong apartment. Of course this starts a chain of events that lead to a bloodbath right out of a Quentin Tarantino or Guy Ritchie movie.

The box contains a vase, the unintended slacker recipients find. And when the vase breaks, these two not-very-good criminals find that they have struck gold as 10 bricks of compressed cocaine spill out. Brody (Mike Epps) and Gooch (Wood Harris) are beside themselves with their luck, and call Brody’s smooth, professional drug-dealing cousin Shavoo (Omari Hardwick) to sell the goods. In the meantime, their neighbor across the hall Jesus (Cisco Reyes) is completely freaking out to his sassy girlfriend Chita (Yasmin Deliz), wondering where the supposedly signed-for box has ended up. You see, a Mexican druglord is on his case, and he doesn’t want to end up like the last unfortunate screw-up in the business.

Basically Next Day Air takes place over 24 hours, and is a comedy of completely inept and not-too-bright criminals who are all on edge, and all have a gun. And oh, yeah, the delivery driver gets in the middle of it all.

Despite the fact that the film feels like a blatant rip off of all those Lock, Stock, & Two Smoking Barrels-esque films and really offers nothing new, I still found Next Day Air to be mostly enjoyable. Faison and Def are always a hoot and provide the most comic relief, but I also really enjoyed Mike Epps’ performance, and there wasn’t a weak link in the rest of the ensemble cast. Next Day Air is a fun, silly, and violent comedy of errors that is both pretty much forgettable, but still leaves you with a surprise laugh to take with you in the very last scene.