Mob Land

Shelby Connors (Shiloh Fernandez) turns her hot laps at the local drag strip. The mechanic swallowed the medicine to stop his shaking hands. The crowd cheered as the car left the line with burning rubber and smoke. Shelby returns to her rural Mississippi home.

He works on an engine in a warehouse as his young daughter, Mila (Tia Dimartino), looks on. Shelby’s wife, Caroline (Ashley Benson), comes to pick up the girl during her brother’s visit. Trey (Kevin Dillon) laughs while Shelby scoffs at his lime green Japanese import. The laughter stopped when Shelby’s uncle arrived. Sheriff Bodie Davis (John Travolta) greets his nephew before questioning an upset Trey.

A sheriff tries to keep the peace when a desperate family man violently robs a pill mill with his brother-in-law, alerting an enforcer for the New Orleans mafia.

The next day brought sobering news. Shelby was told by her owner that her friend had died of a drug overdose. He allows himself and Trey to be led to a seemingly harmless place of business. Trey pointed to a pain clinic next to a karate studio. He tells Shelby that it is a drug factory filled with untraceable money. They could easily steal $100,000. Shelby curses Trey for taking her there. He didn’t want to hear another word.

The plan was wrong from the start. Trey was forced to go to the reserve. Some idiot recognized Trey’s voice. He was shot in the chest. Another villain also suffered the same fate. Shelby watches in shock as Trey gets his money and drugs back. They ran out of the parking lot and gave chase. Bodie gets a call about a robbery and a shooting in progress. In New Orleans, Clayton Minor (the great Stephen Dorff), a hardened assassin, is assigned a new mission. He is sent to recover stolen goods and find the culprit.

But Shelby’s calculations soon changed. His source of work has dried up. A trip to the bank confirms the dire financial outlook. Caroline and Mila are going to visit her parents. This would be the perfect time for the robbery. Trey buys a muscle car, ski mask, and gun. This makes Shelby wary, but Trey swears that all he has to do is drive.

Mob Land’s fatal flaw is that it does not respect the audience’s intelligence after building the characters. Shelby’s money problems make sense. He is in bad shape. It’s believable that Trey could convince him to do something dangerous and stupid. The plot falls apart when Bodie and his hapless deputy (Timothy V. Murphy) get video of the escape. They clearly recognized that the driver was skilled. Hmmm…could it be someone from the city running down the strip? This thought never crossed their minds. This becomes increasingly unbelievable as the surviving employees of the pill factory admit to having ties to the Mafia. Local law enforcement inexplicably receives no federal or state support, even though crime at this level is far beyond their pay grade. Clayton arrives in town and discovers the theft after less than five minutes on screen. Dorff, who has an excellent screen presence and plays menacing characters well, becomes a puppeteer to clean up the mess. This involves a lot of murder as Shelby is forced to do what she wants.