A sincere trigger warning here: ON THE COUNT OF THREE (2021) is a movie about suicide. So please skip this one if that would bring up thoughts you don’t want. This is a very dark buddy comedy and in the opening scene the buddies have agreed to shoot each other. One of them hesitates at the last second and knocks the gun away (“I balked on that one, sorry,” he says), and they agree to have one last day, unencumbered by any worries about the future, before they go through with it.

Outwardly it would appear that the more messed up of the two is Kevin (Christopher Abbott, POSSESSOR, POOR THINGS, WOLF MAN), who has been severely troubled his whole life and tried to overdose by himself only three days ago. His best friend Val (comedian Jerrod Carmichael, also making his directorial debut, not counting two HBO documentaries) is seemingly more grounded, but he’s the instigator here, busting Kevin out of the psychiatric hospital, driving him to an alley next to a strip club and asking him to do this. When he asks Kevin if he was serious about wanting to die the other day or if it was just a cry for help, Kevin is offended. “That’s rude.”

Once they agree to the postponement, they awkwardly eat breakfast at a diner together and brainstorm ways to either tie up loose ends or take advantage of no longer needing to worry about self preservation. That means everything from riding a dirt bike track to confronting the adults who most damaged them as kids. They decide to go to the office of the doctor who molested Kevin (Henry Winkler, BLACK ADAM) and shoot him, but it turns out that sort of thing can be kind of hard to do on short notice.

It’s not making light of any of this stuff – in fact I think it’s respectful of life to show that even a world full of such despair and horrors is inhabited by unique people, odd choices and strange occurrences that they might even laugh about some day if they’re able to go on living. Both of the leads give phenomenally layered performances, truly funny characters despite the searing anger and sadness at their cores. Kevin feels self conscious about carrying the gun around because he’s always believed in gun control. He complains that guns “give insecure men the illusion of power” while he’s bringing one to murder a guy. He passionately loves a Papa Roach song about suicide and keeps trying to play it even though Val thinks it’s embarrassing to listen to something so on the nose today. And the shit sandwich he’s been handed has a comical extravagance to it, like when an acquaintance from high school (Ryan McDonald, BECKY) is excited to run into him at the diner, says he was just telling his wife (Allison Busner, WELL SUITED FOR CHRISTMAS) about him, and as the conversation continues we realize that he was telling her about bullying and seriously injuring him. He seems to think Kevin will be nostalgic for it too. Apparently hasn’t had a single moment of reflection.

Tiffany Haddish (GIRLS TRIP, BAD TRIP) is very good in a small part as Val’s ex-girlfriend Nat. I saw her name on a movie directed by a comedian, I assumed she was gonna come in and improvise jokes for a scene or two, but that’s not what this is at all. Thinking about her in THE CARD COUNTER, but especially in this, I think a serious Tiffany Haddish role is kind of like a serious Chris Tucker role. We’re so used to her riffing at lightning speed trying to make us laugh, even in interviews. We don’t see much of her serious side. So when she has that same charisma and those same rhythms but she’s not trying to entertain, in fact she’s very angry, it’s powerful. The whole scene is devastating because he’s trying to give her a bunch of cash and she’s telling him he needs therapy and you can see him holding back from telling her why that’s not in his plans.

As director, Carmichael also weaponizes our love for J.B. Smoove (POOTIE TANG, TOP FIVE), who has a scene as Val’s estranged father Lyndell. At first it seems like they might make up after all these years, there’s that J.B. Smoove charm, but even as he’s joking there’s something kind of scary behind his eyes. Normally you have no idea where he’s going, and he probly has no idea where he’s going. This time you start to get the hint that he’s headed somewhere dark and mean, and that’s what he does after Val aks him to pay back some money he stole. It’s genuinely unsettling. Carmichael also pulls off the trick of having a “Big Mouth Billy Bass” novelty singing fish thing in the room that keeps going off during a scene of violence, and making it feel more nightmarish than wacky.

I will note cinematographer Marshall Adams (from that TV show Felicity that used to be on I believe around September 1998 through May 2002 or so) because this is not one of the “well, they do what they can on a low budget” type of indies, it’s one of the “Damn, movies can still look like movies” ones. Good job. I guess he also did a Breaking Bad and its movie EL CAMINO and the Michael Keaton directed KNOX GOES AWAY.

Carmichael didn’t write this one, but it’s credited to Ari Katcher and Ryan Welch, co-creators of the show Ramy (which was executive produced by Carmichael). Katcher also wrote for and produced The Carmichael Show.

I’m only a little familiar with Carmichael’s career. I didn’t watch much of his sitcom, but I did know him a little from standup when he popped up in TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT. I really liked his 2022 HBO special Rothaniel. It’s notable as the special where he came out as gay, and it’s a really funny, obviously super personal set, beautifully shot in a small club. I absolutely love how it opens by showing him walking to the club, coming in the front door, giving somebody his coat and hat, walking through the crowd onto the stage and starting. That idea may very well come from director Bo Burnham, but the fact that Carmichael understood the value of presenting standup comedy in a different way makes me unsurprised that I also like his feature film directing style.

I know he spent some time in the development mines trying to do some bigger, more mainstream (but interesting) movies. He was supposed to star in and write a remake of 48 HOURS directed by the Safdie Brothers. He was also recruited by Quentin Tarantino to write a DJANGO/ZORRO script. Tarantino wrote a comic series based on the idea that wasn’t very good, but the movie sounds so cool because it was supposed to be about “Django meeting the legendary Zorro and teaming up with him to free local indigenous people from slavery.” They wanted it to be Jamie Foxx and Antonio Banderas! Can you imagine? But it was too expensive so it’s dead.

Man, rich people suck these days. All the money in the world to burn the earth, erase art and starve the poor, none to fund a dual sequel to DJANGO UNCHAINED and MASK OF ZORRO. Fuck ‘em. They don’t care about us. But even if he’s doing low key movies that just play Sundance and then disappear into the Hulu menu, I think Carmichael is a good fit for the freedom of indie movies. This is one that dares to poke around in uncomfortable territory and find a very unusual tone. It’s blunt about probing our bleakest thoughts, but in service of trying to find a little light up ahead. Not so much light that it seems phony – just a very dim light, in the midst of horrible tragedy, but it’s something. I found it moving.