I run hot and cold on Danny McBride, in the sense that I run hot and cold on Danny McBride projects. If you wish to contain his brand of gregarious psychopathy, you have to build the right kind of cage for him, otherwise you end up with a Danny McBride performance without a structure to keep it hemmed in or even to give it context. What I’m trying to say is: McBride doing his thing in a movie unequipped to handle it is totally uncomfortable to watch.
Enter Arizona. (Don’t enter Arizona. It’s hot there.) Derivative, maybe, a bit Tarantino-esque, maybe closer to movies like Very Bad Things and Suicide Kings, but it’s a solid version of that kind of dark comedy slash crime thriller, mostly on the back of McBride’s performance as the lead maniac.
My review of Arizona appears in Paste Magazine.
A Constant Visual Feast 