Next Day Air

Next Day Air is sort of bracing, though it isn't very good: Its total lack of dramatic and comic bearings, to say nothing of a point, keeps you wondering about the next fatality, in a half-interested way.

Consistently unremarkable from its dullsville title on down.

There are no cops, not much farcical energy, and none of the satiric edge it would take to pull off the film's grim denouement.

Next Day Air is dumb. Completely, totally and almost irredeemably dumb.

He may be a first-time feature director, but music video master Benny Boom clearly knows how to pull a midlevel movie together. That's harder than it sounds.

Next Day Air is well-intentioned but ill-thought, an amateur work by a first time filmmaking team trying to make the kind of film they like to watch, but ignorant of what makes those kinds of films work.

[Director Benny Boom] keeps the proceedings competent in the face of a labyrinthine plot that begs for more so-called flair than it deserves.

Updates the spirit of blaxploitation without feeling pressed to worship or satirize it.

Nearly every scene is a play on the perception that the accumulation of wealth will bring social validation and self-worth.