Vince Vaughn plays opposite himself in the action comedy “Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice,” an R-rated gangster movie that took SXSW by storm with its world premiere Saturday night.
The film, which will be released on Hulu on March 27th, was directed by Ben-David Grabinski and follows future Nick and present Nick as gangster Nick (Vaughn) travels back in time to save his gangster buddy Mike (James Marsden) from murder. Eiza González plays Alice, a woman caught between two dangerous men as the four (or should we say?) face off against an assassin, a mastermind, and a coke-sniffing henchman. The ensemble includes Keith David, Jimmy Tatro, Stephen Root, Louis Tan, Ben Schwartz, Emily Hampshire, and Arturo Castro.
Grabinski introduced the film by reading comments written on his cell phone. “This next speech was saved in a Google Doc as the speech I would give if ‘Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice’ won an MTV Movie Award,” he said. “But I’m sure they don’t exist anymore. That sucks.”
“Movies are the best thing in the world. Movies get me up in the morning. Movies make me who I am. Movies bring me joy and you’re about to watch a shitty movie. A movie made by a major studio with movie stars, jokes and fights and surprises and explosions and lots of music and a time machine,” he added, setting the stakes.
This movie is filled with laugh-out-loud moments and absurd, violent fight scenes. And, without spoilers, a famous action movie star makes a surprise cameo as a hitman.
“I’m really happy that I was able to bring my original ideas to life,” Vaughn said in a Q&A after the film.
Gonzalez, who also stars in another SXSW headliner, “I Love Boosters,” said he was “terrified” to appear on “Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice” because he “has never done comedy before.”
“Please be kind to me,” she implored the audience. “It was my first time doing this, so I was really nervous.”
Vaughn calmed his co-star’s nerves, saying, “I thought you were very funny. You were very confident, so I was very surprised to hear you say you were nervous. You had a lot of great ideas and I thought you would be great in this movie.”
