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Timberlake's acting aside, Reptile is the perfect kind of digestible, mid-budget crime thriller that we just don’t get enough of.

The aspiration itself—what seems to be the clear desire to elevate a conventional murder drama to something greater—feels unmistakably tangible. And ambitious attempts are often intriguing even if they don’t always land.

Every scene with Del Toro is magnetic — this is his best role in years. The film is worth watching for his performance alone. It is almost a modern noir, but in a fresh take, the detective has a happy relationship.

It’s a good, fun film, the kind that likely scans differently with repeat viewings, and includes a savvy wink to the vegan word as per Silverstone’s noble and ongoing mission. But I had the killer — if not the labyrinthine impetus for the crime — pegged from the get-go.

There’s no doubt, from the way Reptile creeps in the first half, that Singer is a skilled director. But there’s something to be said for restraint, which the helmer, who wrote his screenplay with Benjamin Brewer and the film’s star Benicio Del Toro, doesn’t exercise enough of here. In an effort to prove its cleverness, Reptile clanks, rattles and stumbles in its second half.

Del Toro always brings it, and this is actually one of his more intriguing performances in a long time, but one consistently wishes that it was in a movie that knew what to do with it.

Grant Singer’s best directorial decision in a film filled with clumsy ones is giving Del Toro as much real estate as possible, in many occasions having the entire screen filled by his visage––sad, squinted, glaring eyes look right at you through the dead-center of the frame.

Reptile just feels wayward and listless.

Singer’s Reptile, distributed by Netflix, wants to be a David Fincher procedural with Steven Soderbergh’s paranoia, but it’s a fangless homage without suspense, logic, or shame.

Grant Singer’s feature directorial debut suffers from an overinflated sense of grandeur and a frustratingly convoluted story, reaching for dramatic heights that it hasn’t earned.