Riff Raff

There is a specific kind of cinematic vertigo that occurs when you see Ed Harris—the man who personifies "stony-faced gravitas"—sharing a frame with Jennifer Coolidge. It’s like watching a high-stakes chess match being interrupted by someone playing a slide whistle. Yet, in Riff Raff, this bizarre alchemy is exactly what kept me glued to the screen. Released into the mid-2020s landscape where "theatrical" often means "superhero" and "streaming" often means "forgettable," this film occupies that shaky middle ground: the star-studded indie crime-comedy that feels like a throwback while trying to navigate the messy sensibilities of right now.

I watched this on a Tuesday night while my cat was obsessively trying to eat a piece of stray tinsel from behind the TV, and honestly, that chaotic energy mirrored the movie perfectly.

A Hitman’s Holiday from Hell

The setup is classic noir-adjacent territory. Vince (Ed Harris, doing his best "I’m too old for this" squint) has traded his life as a mob enforcer for a quiet, sun-dappled existence with his wife Sandy (Gabrielle Union). He’s the guy who gave us The Abyss and Pollock, so we know he can carry the weight of a dark past with just a furrowed brow. But the peace is shattered when his ex-wife Ruth (Jennifer Coolidge) and their estranged son DJ (Miles J. Harvey) turn up for the holidays.

They aren't just there for the turkey; they’re on the run from Vince’s former "colleagues." Director Dito Montiel, who earned his stripes with the gritty A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, trade-marks his usual New York street-toughness for a more domestic, claustrophobic tension. The script by John Pollono (who wrote the excellent Stronger) leans heavily into the "family is the real crime" trope, but it’s the cast that keeps the engine from stalling.

The Coolidge-aissance Meets the Old Guard

Let’s be real: we are living in the peak Coolidge-aissance. After The White Lotus, Jennifer Coolidge could probably get a standing ovation for reading a grocery list, and here she is a pink-velour hurricane of suburban chaos. She plays Ruth with that signature breathy bewilderment, but there’s a sharp edge to her here that reminds you she’s a seasoned pro. The way she bounces off Ed Harris is fascinating; he’s playing a drama, and she’s playing a farce, and somehow the movie survives the collision.

Then you have Lewis Pullman (who really stepped into the light in Top Gun: Maverick) as Rocco. He brings a twitchy, modern energy to the "mob associate" archetype. It’s a performance that feels very 2025—less about "omerta" and more about the anxiety of living up to a legacy of violence. Gabrielle Union is unfortunately given the "rational wife" role, which is a bit of a waste of her talents, but she provides the necessary anchor for the increasingly absurd situations.

Why It Struggled (and Why You Should Care)

The box office for Riff Raff—clocking in at just under a million dollars—is a sobering reflection of the current era. In the 1990s, this would have been a mid-budget sleeper hit, staying in theaters for months on word-of-mouth about the "Ed and Jennifer" pairing. Today, it’s the kind of film that gets a "prestige VOD" release, competing with TikTok trends and the latest MCU behemoth. It’s a "middle-movie," and middle-movies are currently an endangered species.

However, its obscurity is its charm. There is something inherently satisfying about a film that doesn't feel like it was written by an algorithm designed to hit four different quadrants. It’s messy. The tonal shifts from "family bickering" to "impending execution" are jarring, and the third act feels like the writers realized they had 15 minutes to wrap up three different movies. But in an era of polished, focus-grouped perfection, I’ll take a weird, slightly broken crime-comedy any day.

The cinematography by Xavier Grobet (who worked on The Menu) manages to make the domestic setting feel both cozy and like a cage. The score by Adam Taylor avoids the typical "wacky heist" tropes, instead opting for something that highlights the genuine drama of a man seeing his two lives collide. It’s a film that asks what "representation" looks like in the underworld, giving us a multi-generational, multi-ethnic family unit that feels lived-in rather than checked-off.

Riff Raff isn't going to redefine the crime genre, and it’s not the "instant classic" the marketing might have hoped for. But it is a testament to the fact that putting talented, wildly different actors in a room and letting them simmer is still a valid way to make a movie. If you’ve got 100 minutes to spare and want to see Ed Harris look genuinely terrified of Jennifer Coolidge, this is your best bet. It’s a jagged little holiday pill that goes down easier than you’d expect.