Bill Murray has had a late stage career renaissance
playing curmudgeonly irritated men whose bitterness and sarcasm masks some deep
loss within. It started with Rushmore
and found one of its greatest expressions in Lost in Translation. It reaches a nadir in Theodore Melfi’s St. Vincent which has Murray playing the
title character who is anything but a saint.
Vincent is a rude misanthropic angry man with a
ramshackle house that’s falling apart, a car that isn’t doing much better, a
healthy drinking problem, and a penchant for gambling as a means of increasing
his debs and chances of getting broken kneecaps from his loan shark Zucko
(Terrence Howard). Oh, and his best friend is Daka, a pregnant prostitute
stripper (Naomi Watts, sporting a cartoonish Russian accent) whose employment
options are limited to men who find her belly a turn-on.
