Let’s Kill Ward’s Wife

Ward1Stacy (Dagmara Domińczyk) is highly strung. To put it mildly. It is the day of her infant son Ramon’s Christening, and rather than enjoying the company of her friends she uses the slightest provocation to lash out at her husband timid Ward (Scrubs’ Donald Faison), spoiling the day for everyone, and not for the first time. Ward had hoped to spend the following weekend with his friends playing golf, but he practically has to beg the permission of his wife.

“If you don’t want to spend father’s day with your son that’s up to you,” she grudgingly offers in a passive-aggressive rather than aggressive mood. In the event, not willing to cross Stacy and too afraid to face break the news to his friends who already regard him as little more than the property of his domineering wife, he waits until they are on the course waiting for him when he calls to say he won’t be joining them.

Ward3As they discuss the situation over hot dogs, David, Ronnie and Tom (Space Station 76‘s Patrick Wilson, The Mob Doctor‘s James Carpinello and True Blood‘s Scott Foley who also wrote and directed) reflect that this is nothing new, that Stacy has been bullying him for as long as they remember. “She’s got him believing that all of her problems stem from him,” Ronnie says.

There is only one solution: they will have to kill Stacy. But what of young Ramon? David says their idea is better than “growing up with that troll as your mother.”  They’re not serious, or course, just the banter that guys toss about when their wives aren’t there to keep them in line, though in fact none of their wives like Stacy either. In order to get Ward a day off, they suggest a girl’s day out but none of them want to spend time with her either, well aware that all she will do is complain and blame others and bring them all down.

Ward2Killing Ward’s wife is a difficult proposition; the consideration of the practicalities and morals of cinematic murder have been examined by Alfred Hitchcock in Rope (1948) and Strangers on a Train (1951), the latter remade as the comedy Throw Momma from the Train (1987), not to mention Heathers (1988), The Last Supper (1996) and Dead Man’s Curve (1998), but with the exception of the Billy Crystal/Danny DeVito double act where nobody is actually killed, none of these films have been required to make the perpetrators likeable.

Ward’s friends, however, are a nice bunch of people who care about him and while Stacy is appropriately horrible without venturing too far into caricature the crucial early scenes flip between the multiple characters too rapidly giving the audience little time to come to know them, but Stacy in particular needs examination other than post-mortem: was she suffering from post-natal depression or was she just a genuinely irredeemable bitch?

Ward4Either way, is this sufficient justification to kill her?

To get away with murder you have to be sharp and smart, but neither the film nor Ward’s friends have sufficient of these attributes nor the requisite ruthlessness, though in the event the killing is not quite so cold-blooded or premeditated as anticipated, but nor are the consequences on the conspirators who debate their mildly dark feelings in sunshine then go inside to cut up the body with only Ronnie later showing hints of unravelling.

Ward6With a distressing physicality which literally cuts to the bone (remember to use a sharp knife; blunt knives cause accidents), the scenes discussing the various means of disposing of a body (“Oh, Fargo, I love that movie,” says genre favourite Amy Acker’s Geena when a wood chipper is proposed) and the actual undertaking are the most upsetting but also the funniest in a film of questionable taste and morality.

Both Faison and Acker are brilliant, he selling the dilemma of the disposal of his dead wife whom he once loved with the support of his loving friends who only want the best for him, she treading a line where it is never clear if she is utterly oblivious to what is unfolding or remaining the most pragmatic and practical when she states she wouldn’t have worn her favourite shoes if she had known their clothes would have to be buried, but as a whole the film never feels complete or quite as good as it should considering the talent and experience involved.

Let’s Kill Ward’s Wife is released on DVD on 13th April

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