‘The Tax Collector' Is Trashy Latino Gangland Nonsense [Review]

Writer-director David Ayer is fascinated by violent L.A. street culture, after all, the best-known works of his career, his screenplay for “Training Day” and his underrated cop drama “End of Watch,“ have taken place in that very millieu’s endless gang warzones.

In “The Tax Collector,” Ayer returns to familiar territory with a smaller-scaled L.A. tale, albeit one that, on paper, should be more than welcomed after his last two critically reviled pictures “Suicide Squad “ Netflix's “Bright.” However, this grim bloodbath feels all-too rote as it tackles the plight of two gangland tax collectors played by Bobby Boto and Shia LaBeouf.

Shot with a keen visual eye for gutter poetry by Salvatore Totino, “The Tax Collector” follows David (Soto) and his sidekick Creeper (LaBeouf, miscast) as they oversee and collect a weekly tally of protection money from 43 different L.A. street gangs. Their daily routine is, however, upended when an old rival crime boss pops back into the picture and intends on reshaping the street-gang landscape, with or without the assistance of our two main protagonists.

The hostile rival is Conejo (Jose Martin), back from a stint in Mexico, and ready to spill some blood for power. At first, Conejo extends his hand to David and Creeper, offering to give them important roles in his empirical plans to take over the streets of Southern Los Angeles. When they politely decline, well, suffice to say, shit hits the fan as Conejo sends one brutal message after another.

"I'm the future and you're the past," Conejo tells David, later adding that if he doesn’t abide then, "Everything you love is gonna die." The subplot involving David’s child and his wife Alexis (Cinthya Carmona), who is in charge of the family's monetary criminal operations, feels like it’s there ust to make good on Conejo’s threat — it’s quite obvious that Ayer is going to put them in vulnerably dangerous situations later on in the film as David tries to protect them from the wrath of Conejo.

Nothing new is said in “The Tax Collector,” there isn’t a moment of drama here that hasn’t already been tackled in fresher and better gangster films. Ayer's upbringing in L.A. was supposed to make this an immersive experience, but, unlike his better films, the result is nothing less than tepid. Ayer’s self-seriousness with the topic at hand is damn-near comical as we head towards the inevitable climactic bloodfest.

Even the promise of seeing Laboeuf go full-on method acting, he actually tattooed his entire chest to get into his role as creeper, feels strained and odd. The Armani suits and expensive sunglasses Creeper wears on a daily basis don’t fit Laboeuf’s scrawny body type, ditto the nastily threatening dialogue his character spews, which don’t scare or intimidate the way he or Ayer intended them to. It’s not that LaBoeuf doesn’t have the talent to pull off such a role, it’s more the fact that he feels miscast as the Hispanic-influenced Creeper. Is he even playing a Hispanic character here? The film doesn’t really explain.

And so, this lack of realism, not to mention humanity, not to mention the abundance of the cliches in Ayer’s screenplay, keeps us at a distance throughout, much like his last few films, this is dramatically inert stuff by Ayer, with too little depth. [D]