Writer/Director BenDavid Grabinski has crafted something unique and special here in the year of our lord two thousand and twenty six.
Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice is a wholly original screenplay based on zero pre-existing IP. It is also financed by a major Hollywood studio. It features an A-list cast. And it’s a high concept genre mashup. In 2026! Shit like this just doesn’t happen anymore, and it couldn’t have happened for a more deserving guy than the talented and passionate Grabinski.
Mike (James Marsden) is an affable and romantic type who just happens to also be a gangster who’s really good at all the shooting and fighting parts. Alice (Eiza González) is a free spirit who settles down with the wrong gangster in the hardened Nick (Vince Vaughn), who also happens to be Quick Draw Mike’s partner. Mike and Nick work for a syndicate run by Sosa (Keith David just devours this role) and his failson Jimmy Boy (the hilarious Jimmy Tatro). As we meet all these wonderful characters, the structure focuses around the many, many parties going all night long to celebrate Jimmy Boy getting out of prison. Unfortunately, there was a rat that put Jimmy away, and amidst all the partying, Sosa is going to sniff out the rat and take care of them. And even more unfortunately than that, Sosa thinks Mike is the rat.
I’m going to tread extremely lightly here in an attempt to save all the best twists, turns, and delightful surprises Grabinski and crew have in store for you with Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice. If you read no further I’ll simply offer the highest of recommendations for this gem of a gangster film, rife with heart, character development, and hilarious and personal cultural references. If you want to see beautiful people delight and entertain you with something fresh and original while still playing with some of the most classic tropes in the business, then look no further than Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice.
Now, I’m STILL not going to spoil almost anything about the plotting and revelations of Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice, but I AM going to mention a core plot mechanic that is revealed very early on. You’ve been warned. This is a time travel movie. And despite all the love I have for the most complex and intricate of time travel movies like Primer or Looper, Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice follows in the more pure and simple and streamlined traditions of time travel movies, like a Timecop, if you will. Mind you, all the rules of time travel in this particular story are perfectly well spelled out and internally consistent within the film. But Grabinski is having too much fun with his characters and his story to get bogged down with the time travel minutiae. In this film, it is simply the case that Alice’s friend Symon (Ben Schwartz) borrowed some gangster money from gangster Nick in order to complete his work on a time machine, and he succeeded.
What this creates, then, is the scenario where there are two Nicks. Present Nick is a bastard who is also understandably hurt that his partner has fallen in love with his wife. Future Nick, however, has done some legitimate growing, and doesn’t like the events that were set in motion on the night of Jimmy Boy’s welcome home parties. So he uses the time machine to see if he can change things. Present Nick, however, struggles a bit to embrace the lived experience that Future Nick assures him of.
I’m really going to steer clear from plot specifics from here on out and focus on the many joys of BenDavid Grabinski’s approach to this particular tale. And “particular” is the key word here. Ever since Everything Everywhere All At Once, I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of specificity in movies. Why did I relate so profoundly to that Oscar winning SXSW title when it was about the Asian American immigrant experience and I’m a cis het white guy? Paradoxically it seems that the more specific a filmmaker gets, the more universal their truths become. Here with Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice, a viewer can simply feel in its bones the influences and inspirations and references that matter to one guy: BenDavid Grabinski. This film wasn’t written by a committee, or fucking generative AI… it’s one film lover who is unafraid to write characters from the heart, to tell jokes that might only be funny to him, and make cultural references that could hit or miss. I’m simply saying that humanity and a profound love of genre cinema flows out of Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice, and that’s such a relief.
One such clear inspiration for BenDavid Grabinski happens to be one of my most formative and beloved subgenres that has made me the cinephile that I am today; and that would be the subgenre of “heroic bloodshed”, popularized by the golden age of Hong Kong cinema in the 1980s and 1990s, with maestro John Woo being perhaps the most widely recognized purveyor of that beautiful carnage. Heroic bloodshed films feature heightened, balletic violence, and often focus on themes of brotherhood and melodramatic redemption or destruction. I felt the DNA of John Woo’s masterpieces such as Hard Boiled, The Killer, and the Better Tomorrow series pulsing through Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice, even if the lighthearted comedic tone of the piece distinguished it significantly from those works. At times I can be a simple man, and I simply cannot NOT love a film that not only wears its love for John Woo on its sleeve, but also lives up to that comparison as something entirely its own.
While I did love Everything Everywhere All At Once, and also love Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice, I tend to think that somewhere of late cinema has gotten too busy. The MCU got to feeling like homework, and meta stories started feeling cynical, and I’ve begun gravitating back to the joys of human connections and human work in cinema. The Daniels with EEAAO and BenDavid Grabinski here have succeeded in perhaps telling maximalist stories, full of all the pizazz and style and modern sensibilities that audiences have become accustomed to, and infused them with old school heart, and wit, and a focus on the human capacity to change, grow, fuck up, and forgive.
I challenge anyone to not be entertained by Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice. For the old school, you’ve got beautiful and talented actors charming us with their wit. And the drama that unfolds tugs at feelings most of us have experienced or wrestled with. For the new school, you’ve got clever time travel done cleanly and effectively, surprise twists and turns, and a little bullet ballet for good measure. You may not catch every cultural reference or laugh at every joke, but that’s okay, because you’re in the very specific human hands of BenDavid Grabinski, who has crafted this tale for you from the heart.
And I’m Out.
That sounds fantastic! I’m always looking for films that blend genres like that, and the description really piqued my interest.