Movie Review: Irish Hitman tries to retire in 1990s NYC — “The Mick and the Trick”

The accents are cartoonish, the performances broad, the situations silly and the blood and bullets are everywhere in “The Mick and the Trick,” a lunkheaded action comedy about a hitman’s “retirement plan.”

Actor turned writer-director Tom DeNucci doesn’t shake his C-movies-straining-to-be-Bs status with his latest, which is no step up from “Self Storage,””Saving Christmas” or “Johnny & Clyde,” just a few of the titles viewers have complained about on his IMDb page.

DeNucci’s idea of a period piece is a Good Friday Peace Agreement era story of a grizzled Irish-American hitman Patrick (Peter Greene) of 20 years standing carrying out that one New York murder that puts him over the edge.

“The war’s OVER. I’m spent! Get me out, across the pond,” he demands of his best customer, Irish mobster Finn (Fred Sullivan).

Shoooore, “have a pint, talk some treason,” Finn assures him. But noooo, “not every day is Paddy’s day.” Things have “changed,” over there. But he’ll make some calls.

It’s just that “The Mick” represents “loose ends” to mobsters like Finn, his Big Boss (John Fiore) and their Cuban rival Carlos (Robert J. Morgalo). Next thing The Mick knows, multiple assassins are coming for him.

That sniper who thought he killed him and did a little Irish jig, to diddley aye music, on a New York rooftop ends up tumbling off that roof with his quarry. And that’s how “Paddy, the Mick” ends up with Sugar (Jazz Vilá), the Latina transgender “trick.”

This is the sort of B-movie (being generous) where hit men pause in the middle of a job to “have a drink” with each other in admiration, where transgender hookers pick up a battered mobster lying next to a dead mobster in an alley to nurse the survivor back to health.

Sugar’s accent is “Seinfeld” gay bully broad and thick, every bit as exaggerated and dated as the Irish and Cuban intonations we’ve already heard, and the “What’s he doing in ’90s New York?” Cajun parody to come.

A dirty cop (Federica Castelluccio) is on their trail, along with other mob lieutenants. And a good cop (Darlene Tejeiro) is on the dirty cop’s tail.

Sugar and The Mick must team-up to avoid capture, and to get revenge, a quest that will require more hookers, hitman training, robbing the mob and getting along.

“We all need someone sometimes,” Sugar counsels, and The Mick listens.

I like the way “Pulp Fiction” alumna Greene sucks on his cigarettes so hard you’d swear his cheeks knocked out all his molars. Vilá makes the most of a character who’s more of a caricature. And as dated as the ethnic and gender stereotypes are here, there’s little that reaches the level of offensive.

But “‘The Mick and the Trick” is just tired, played-out and tone deaf, a C-movie that barely qualifies as a B, and a title that verifies Finn’s ever-so-Irish warning about it all.

“Not every day is Paddy’s day.”

Rating: TV-16+, bloody violence, drug abuse, smoking, profanity

Cast: Peter Greene, Jazz Vilá, Darlene Tejeiro, Federico Castelluccio, Robert J. Morgalo, Richard Kline and Fred Sullivan

Credits: Directed by Tom DeNucci, scripted by Ozz Gomez and Robert J. Morgalo. An Ammo Content release on Amazon Prime.

Running time: 1:36

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About Roger Moore

Movie Critic, formerly with McClatchy-Tribune News Service, Orlando Sentinel, published in Spin Magazine, The World and now published here, Orlando Magazine, Autoweek Magazine
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