Naked Singularity hits theaters on Aug. 6 and will be available On Demand on Aug. 13.
The best thing to say about Naked Singularity is that it’s further proof that John Boyega is one of Hollywood’s most capable leading men. His assured performance manages to save this thinly conceived crime drama from outright tedium, keeping us rooting for a better movie to take hold around it even once it becomes clear that will never happen.
Adapting Sergio de la Pava’s novel of the same name, It screenwriter Chase Palmer, in his directorial debut, attempts to spin a genre movie out of an intriguing metaphor. De la Pava’s novel draws a profound comparison between the unforgiving convictions dealt by the American criminal justice system and the crushing gravitational pull of a black hole, questioning what lies beyond a collapsing abyss that nothing can escape from. Palmer’s adaptation doesn’t only fall short of exploring that concept, but also largely abandons the endeavor of even trying to.
Boyega stars as Casi, a frumpy, overworked New York public defender who is hitting a breaking point in his young career. The only idealist working in his courthouse, Casi finds himself frustrated by his inability to save clients from harsh convictions within an underfunded, overcrowded bureaucracy.
Naked Singularity is at its best during this opening stretch. The action is driven by a wry humor, sticking with Casi as he rolls with the punches. At the same time, it doesn’t minimize the terrible nature of Casi’s clients’ situations. Boyega’s performance is key to maintaining the layered tone of this first act. From dry retorts to defeated pleas, he carries an exhaustion that gives us an idea of how often his good intentions are thwarted by unfair roadblocks.
The argument being made in these scenes is that the criminal justice system is a merciless, life-ruining machine. Naked Singularity begins to stumble once it tries to move on from that thesis. Fed up with his limits as a public defender, Casi finds himself involved in a heist that draws in his impulsive pal at the courthouse (It alum Bill Skarsgård), a former client who’s sick of the life she’s been dealt (Olivia Cooke), and her Tinder hook-up from hell (Ed Skrein).
While the small cast of characters isn’t a drawback on its own, Naked Singularity might have been able to develop its social criticism more if it had a more panoramic scope or an attention to neighborhood texture. Though Casi finds himself stumbling into a rough-and-tumble world of mean cops and shady characters, the movie doesn’t have many ideas of what to do with its New York setting other than giving Cooke’s character a Bay Ridge accent.
Instead, Naked Singularity sticks to its thin archetypes, attempting to reinvent itself as a crime thriller and falling flat on its face. Each complication in the plot plays more as an arbitrary escalation than a genuine threat to the main characters. Other than the indelible image of Boyega wielding a katana, Palmer doesn’t seem to have a strong idea of how to make the heist’s logistics or Casi’s moral dilemma remotely exciting.
Naked Singularity also makes an attempt to incorporate its titular cosmic event, but those gestures to the supernatural really just play as an afterthought. Tim Blake Nelson plays a crank named Angus who will occasionally pop in to spit some stoner philosophy about astrophysics. While these scenes seem intended to tilt the movie’s sense of reality into something more uncertain and auspicious, they come across as extraneous in the long run. None of the occasional visual anomalies — a glitching electronic sign, a brief instance of levitation — make an impression either, seeming more like obligations to the promises of the title. A more adventurous film wouldn’t skirt around a gonzo, thoughtful use of science-fiction imagery.
Worst of all, Naked Singularity commits the cardinal sin of leaving its story off where a more interesting movie is about to begin. While it makes a moral stance against the American criminal justice system, it doesn’t have the imagination to keep following Casi’s intention to combat it. Instead, the film concocts a dull series of familiar crime movie trappings to keep its protagonist busy. Naked Singularity loses its claim to social criticism in the shuffle, leaving things off on a note of unearned, phony optimism.