Reptile

The estate agent Summer Elswick is murdered and the case goes to detective Tom Nichols. A suspect surfaces early and Nichols will not accept that it is closed. What he traces is police corruption and money laundering: properties are planted with drugs and then seized through civil asset forfeiture. It is Grant Singer's first feature. Benicio del Toro stars and co-wrote, with Justin Timberlake and Alicia Silverstone in the cast. Netflix greenlit the project in August 2021. Filming began in Atlanta, Georgia on 15 August 2021. It premiered at the Toronto Film Festival on 7 September 2023, opened in limited release on 22 September and landed on Netflix on 29 September. Reviews were mixed. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 44 percent, the consensus saying that strong work from del Toro and Silverstone is not enough to make up for a convoluted and ultimately underwhelming story. The viewing figures were another matter: it was Netflix's top English-language film worldwide for several consecutive weeks. Who it is for: viewers who like slow procedurals and want to watch del Toro. Who it is not for: anyone needing the solution to be clean. The last act pulls several threads at once and the knot does not quite come apart.