Will Grady (Justin Timberlake) returns to an upscale house he is showing and discovers a tragedy.  His partner, Summer (Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz), was murdered, stabbed multiple times and left in a back room of the home.  Tom Nichols (Benicio del Toro) is assigned to the case, and as he grows closer to identifying the culprit, he will also have to re-account for many aspects of his own life as he begins to question his own place in the lives of those around him. 

Grant Singer directs Reptile for Netflix from a script he co-wrote with Benjamin Brewer and Benicio del Toro.  Debuting at the Toronto International Film Festival, the grim detective’s tale was dropped on the streamer a few weeks later without much fanfare.  With its 134-minute runtime and brooding logline, Reptile promises to be a twisted and brutal crime drama, and though it certainly checks the boxes, it never quite enters into the same conversation as David Fincher or Denis Villeneuve whose work Singer is clearly emulating. 

Tamara-Lee Notcutt led the casting effort, and it is one of the more interesting parts of the film; Timberlake in his first important role in close to a decade, and del Toro as a man taking account of his life.  With a stronger script, this could have really been impactful, but Timberlake’s Will takes a back seat for large portions of the film, del Toro’s Tom does not get that moment of reconciliation that the film is aiming for, and Alicia Silverstone in the role of Judy, Tom’s wife, is screaming for something to build her character on.  Getting back to the case, though, if Tom and Will are supposed to be foils of one another – which Reptile does posit they are – the revelations had by these men are lost on audiences at home.  With del Toro’s own hand in the scripting of the film, who are we to say that it was not still a deeply personal exercise for the actor who certainly holds himself on screen as someone enduring an emotional ordeal, but the script does not go deep enough into the social issues it brings up to really leave that same searing impact on audiences as it does to Tom. He may become more aware of certain things as the case drags on, but he does not seem to end the film as an exceptionally changed man. 

The biggest issue that is brought in for examination by Reptile is corruption within the police force and how it sows seeds of distrust in the communities that they are charged to protect and serve.  In a scene a little past the halfway point, Tom is joined at a gun range with his boss, Captain Allen (Eric Bogosian), so that he can recertify himself with his field weapon after a fatal incident involving a suspect of Summer’s murder.  Allen’s shots are way off target so Tom quickly aims a few rounds at his boss’ chart so that he can still qualify to carry.  Seen by the Ranger, but nodded away in understanding, it is the least egregious example, but the implications are far-reaching when one considers the greater world of the film.  As the motive becomes more apparent to Tom about why Summer was murdered, the chain of corruption reveals itself, too.  It is convoluted as to be expected in these types of stories, but the main problem is that it also feels clunky when the masters of the genre can shed light on a real mess and make it easy, almost glaringly apparent, in hindsight.  Here, it just does not seem to hold that much weight beyond the initial crime.  There is prestige in the filmmaking, aided by a grave performance from del Toro, but there is little for audiences to really sink their teeth into and feel fulfilled for following along. 

The pedigree of Reptile is not just in the casting, but also in its formal presentation.  Mike Gioulakis’ camera is invasive in all the right ways for these kinds of stories and the footage is meticulously edited by Kevin Hickman, but it ultimately leads to nowhere.  Handsomely dressed, but hollow.  Equipped with a mystery that lures us in, the first act is far more interesting than the conclusion, but the craft keeps us engaged as it teases at a fuller mystery.  Singer, with a history in both documentary and music video, put expectations on Reptile that it was to deliver a much more investigative story with a lot more pop and punch that propels the plot along.  The title hints at something that will be truly cold-blooded and the elements of that film are all still here. The autopsy revealed the knife got lodged into Summer’s bone preventing the attack from going on any further. But then the film sheds its skin and becomes something else. The methodic pace which it adopts is not unheard of in these towering dramas to allow audiences to feel some of the weight of which the characters are experiencing, but Singer, in his longest project to date by almost an hour, withers under the weight of this run time and the film comes off feeling more tedious than anything.