If you’re still hearing the clinking of a teaspoon against a teacup, you might have an obsession with a movie that has nothing to do with The Get Out. Although, if there’s a regional specific accent to The Sunken Place, I’m positive Crowe will find it, and it will sound vaguely Eastern European. Really, it’s for the Albanian’s to critique his accent, but its hard to not notice that he seems to really be devoting himself to roles that require him to vocally disappear over the last few years. The funny thing is, the voice you are accustomed to isn’t even his actual voice. he’s a kiwi who grew up in Australia. He doesn’t sound like the American’s he’s played, or any of these European accents. I can’t remember the last film where Crowe spoke in his actual voice.

In The Get Out, Crow plays the owner of a night club, who is well off, and enjoying the fact he has a generationally younger girlfriend (Teresa Palmer), and after a health scare, he wants nothing more than to get out, and enjoy a slower pace, focused on health and longevity.

Then the problems start. Not only does he face blowback because what he really does is clean money for some very dangerous people, but he is also robbed by a stranger (Aaron Paul), in one of the most unnecessary subplots to any film ever.

Russell Crowe is absolutely the reason to watch this, and while Teresa Palmer was fine, most of the rest of the cast could be cut out and it would focus the film more on Crowe. I didn’t need Paul’s naive fake criminal, or the woman who attaches herself to him (Nina Dobrev), and I didn’t really need Luke Evans either, though none of them were bad. They just play extraneous characters.

Every once in a while, you see this more in television or long-running franchises, creatives find their footing, realize who the real stars are, and shift the perspective to support them. Sometimes this leads to hilarious cast exits, as an entire member of a family might go missing. Boy Meets World sent Cory’s sister upstairs, at the end of Season 2, and her character didn’t return until Season 4 when she was played by a new actress. They do this stuff all the time.

In The get Out, had I been given this in a focus group, my feedback would be that Crowe is actually having some fun here, he’s pretty entertaining, and the film building up unnecessary distractions takes away from him. We should be with Crowe in nearly every frame.There’s something about him that suggests in a former younger time, he probably was capable of very bad things, but now in his golden years, he’s thinking about finding the easiest way to a beach with Palmer. The dark humor around the film could have been buoyed a lot by his new health plan, or new medications he’s on, and the young Palmer bothering him with questions about their future post-sale of the club.

Sure, the twist about him laundering money and his boss having a problem with him selling to someone else, works. that’s a conflict. Having Aaron Paul run up, steal from him, and then I have to cut away to Paul and Dobrev (and Evans), just detracts from what works.

It sounds like I didn’t like it, but I actually did, because I liked Crowe. He has been a bit hit or mis recently, with films like Sleeping Dogs and Land Of Bad being hot garbage. Here, the director who had him in Unhinged seems to have a wonderful working relationship with Crowe, and he’s at least on the level of his two Exorcism films. There’s a good actor in Russell Crowe, and he sometimes takes the wrong film, but even this late, when his star isn’t so bright, he can sign onto films like this that work well as vehicles for him.

But this needed to be a vehicle for Crowe, and not really anyone else. Palmer is necessary, and never pulls focus from Crowe, but I’d do a lot of cutting and streamlining beyond that. Vertical is releasing, and I didn’t have audio description, but like so many films, I love actors when they are on point, and Crowe made this worth the watch. Vertical has done audio description theatrically, but their tracks rarely, if ever, make it to streaming or physical, so if you’re a big Russell Crowe fan, and like dark crime comedies, check this out theatrically with description, because it’ll likely be the only chance. I’d go so far as to suggest that a different actor, in the exact same film, might not have been enough to keep this fresh. Some could pull it off, but not everyone.

Backed by yet another accent, Russell Crowe commands attention in The Get Out, a film that works because of him, and would be stronger if it realized that.

Fresh: 6.5/10