Directed by BenDavid Grabinski

Written by BenDavid Grabinski

Starring Vince Vaughn, James Marsden, Eiza González, Keith David, Jimmy Tatro, Stephen Root, Ben Schwartz, Arturo Castro, Emily Hampshire, and Lewis Tan

With its dynamic action thrills, clever laughs, and likable stars, this lands as the sort of incredibly charming ride that I’d love to see more often. I remember hearing about this a few months ago and thinking how it looked like it should be releasing in theaters rather than going straight to streaming. I stand by that position, because this would have been an utter blast on the big screen. The inclusion of Sheena Easton’s “Morning Train (Nine to Five)” alone would have played great. In general, this soundtrack knows how to throw in some damn good needle drops to crank up the mood another level, and it even squeezes in a surprisingly affecting usage of Oasis’s “Don’t Look Back In Anger” to boot. This is one of many facets that I enjoy about the movie as it takes me for a journey that gets me vibing with it early on. The chloroform talk is a bit that I’d recalled from the trailer, and it’s still excellent when it shows up in the first act. This is a moment that especially gives me a glimpse into the bright energy that’s keeping this tale briskly moving forward. It’s got a smart and lively core that encourages me to stride alongside it in order to see what Mike, the two Nicks, and Alice will get up to.

They’re all endearing characters with compelling inter-relationships that make me want to know how things will resolve for them. For Mike and Nick, I can sense the genuine friendship that had connected them together, but this is also effectively clashing against the distance that’s grown between them, especially when you take into account the crap that Nick has done against Mike. For Mike and Alice, I’m rooting for them to be able to exit this criminal underworld and have a happy ending together. For Alice and Nick, I shake a fist at how he’d been treating her, but I can also tell there used to be some form of love between them and now it’s sad to see how things have fallen apart there. For Nick and Nick, we’ve got the present-day version having to reckon with the mistakes that he’s capable of making and learn how to mature beyond them, and then the future version has to take the growth that he’s achieved and try to pass down that ability for self-reflection to his past self (which is our present-day self). Quite a few gears are chugging away in this group, and it allows me to have an easier time when it comes to caring about the narrative. It helps that Vince Vaughn, James Marsden, and Eiza González all do a superb job, matching the snappy tone of BenDavid Grabinski’s direction and bouncing a charismatic chemistry back and forth amongst the threesome (or I guess foursome). Vaughn especially thrives in this dual role that makes me believe I really am watching two Nicks onscreen. He gets me thinking about Freaky here, and I say we can draw a link between these two films because of how they let him flex his comedic muscles in stories that lift us away from our mundane plane of reality and bring in something fantastical for us to have a hoot with. Pretty much everyone in the supporting cast is on their A-game as well, with Jimmy Boy in particular being the type of character who could have been deeply annoying, but Jimmy Tatro knows how to play up his foolishness hilariously. Arturo Castro is also quite amusing, infusing a lovable silliness into Dumbass Tony. Yes, that really is his character’s name. Quite a few of these gangsters have their own nicknames that let us know this movie is willing to have some fun with itself. Even Mike has his own nickname in the form of Quick Draw Mike.

Humor-wise, one of my favorite gags has to be the dumpster baby talk. How it involves rats in the conversation while we’re watching a movie whose plot repeatedly brings up the snitch sort of rat is a detail that this easily carries out. It’s just as effortless for this to deploy laughs throughout the rest of the runtime, with “It’s Christina Aguilera featuring Redman,” “I don’t know cartoons, you don’t know big words. Who cares?”, and “Bad cat vet? Maybe. But great cat daddy. Right?” standing out as a few of the many splendid quotes. I’m curious as to how many of these were already in Grabinski’s script and how many of them were ad-libbed. Props to Marsden for how he pronounces “We are fucked” at one point, because he really enunciates that “fucked,” letting his mouth go wide open. As for the action side of things, this benefits from the movie taking the ingredients that are present in those scenes and their set-pieces, then using them as fully as possible to amp up the entertainment value, with some superb blocking and editing helping to maintain the visuals and the pacing on a smooth path forward. I saw a critic compare this to Ronny Yu and Kirk Wong’s work, and while I can’t personally attest to that, I can certainly imagine how this could be reminiscent of Hong Kong action cinema—an area that I do need to navigate more deeply. The shootouts here are especially emanating the HK vibes. And kudos to how this deploys the step print effect, too, which adds on just a little more style and feels evocative of Wong Kar-wai’s voice.

I will say, though, that you shouldn’t expect this to be heavy on the time-travel material. It’s really more of a simple plot device that gets sprinkled in to fuel the story, and it’s not like we’re getting a ton of twists and turns that are founded on this sci-fi piece. We’re not watching Primer or Timecrimes. With that in mind, I’d highly recommend checking out Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice. I’m very intrigued to watch how this will hold up in my eyes, because I can see it becoming one of my favorite movies of 2026 once the year has crossed the finish line. We shall see.

Final rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars