"On the Count of Three" - Review
This film and review contains many mentions of mental health and suicide.
On the Count of Three is the directorial debut of actor and stand-up comedian Jerrod Carmichael. The film made a splash when it premiered at Sundance 2021. It begins with best friends Val (Carmichael) and Kevin (Christopher Abbott) standing in the alley near a strip club. They have guns pointed at each other and are going to pull the trigger on the count of three.
Then the movie cuts back in time to give a bit more context to what Val and Kevin are doing in that alley. Kevin is in the hospital recovering from a recent suicide attempt. Val works at a factory and is clearly struggling with his own mental health. He just broke up with his girlfriend, and it’s as if he’s checked out of life. Val hits a breaking point and quits his job. He then goes to the hospital to break Kevin out and inform him of the plan he’s made for the two of them. They’re going to spend one last day together and then they’re going to kill each other in a suicide pact.
It’s quite a dark starting point, and one that doesn’t amount to anything more than that. Val and Kevin decide to spend their last day mending relationships and seeking revenge, so the movie’s focus shifts. It becomes less about mental health and more about vengeance. That’s not to say both of those ideas can’t exist cohesively in the movie, but the script doesn’t balance these themes well. It’s a recurring problem in On the Count of Three. There are so many big, interesting, complicated, and necessary ideas milling around, but they never go anywhere meaningful.
United Artists Releasing
What could have been a really interesting movie about male friendships and mental health ultimately falls flat in both regards. For a movie that bills itself as a dark comedy, it doesn’t revel enough in the absurd. Despite the swings that it took in the opening scene, the rest of the movie walks a fairly predictable path. On the Count of Three suffers from having a grand idea, but not knowing how to support it. The performances by Abbott and Carmichael are extremely commendable. Both of them bring a nuance to the struggles of their characters. The script calls for them to do things that would have been seen as edgy and gratuitous in a different movie, but Abbott and Carmichael are able to ground those moments perfectly.
On the Count of Three has a number of interesting ideas at play. While the film doesn’t always work, the performances of Carmichael and Abbott are enough to see it through to the end.
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