Vin Diesel Delivers One Of The Greatest Movie Monologues of All Time In ‘Knockaround Guys’

“You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” The ad wizards who wrote that copy were certainly onto something when they created this memorable tagline, but Decider’s “Take Two” series was specifically formulated in a laboratory by the world’s foremost pop culture scientists to provide a second chance for movies that made a less than stellar first impression upon their original release.

The brilliantly titled Knockaround Guys, written and directed by Billions creators Brian Koppelman and David Levien, is a film that really never got its fair shake. Released only months after 9/11, this gritty little mob movie follows Matty Demaret (Barry Pepper), the frustrated son of crime boss Benny Chains (Dennis Hopper). When Matty can’t get a job in the real world because people fear his father, he decides to go all-in on the family business. With some help from his shady Uncle Teddy (John Malkovich with a truly unhinged accent), Matty secures a shady gig that involves coordinating the pickup and delivery of a mysterious bag from Spokane, Washington to Brooklyn, New York.

Unwisely, he enlists one of his fuckup best friends, Johnny Marbles (Seth Green), the cousin of mob-connected Chris Scarpa (Andy Davoli), who has access to a private plane. Johnny picks up the bag, stops to refuel in Wibaux, Montana and through a series of bad judgements, loses the bag. Having failed his father with what turns out to be an incredibly important job, Matty flies to Wilbaux with Chris and his best friend, enforcer, and all-around tough guy Taylor Reese (Vin Diesel) to retrieve the bag, which turns out to be full of money, and get it back to his father before it’s too late.

Despite its delicious little premise, committed performances and a darkly funny script/vision from the dream team of Koppelman and Levien, Knockaround Guys has a baffling 21% “rotten” rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Perhaps the culprit is the film’s uneven tone—it’s one possible flaw in this writer’s opinion– which proves to be jarring to its audience, especially upon a first viewing. What starts off as a little mob caper with a likeable group of Brooklyn lowlifes (bolstered by good chemistry from its cast) stuck in the unfamiliar and quirky surroundings of a remote Montana town takes a shockingly dark turn midway through the movie. The tonal shift, which ultimately serves a purpose, is signaled by an incredible monologue delivered by Diesel’s Taylor as he delivers a brutal beating to a hapless yokel in a shitkicker bar. A little background on Taylor is apropos. Taylor’s introduction to the film is memorable .

After a bodega owner tries to stiff him on the proceeds from his on-site arcade games, Taylor (with a gold Star of David necklace swinging around his neck) inexplicably smashes up his own machines with a crowbar to frighten the man. Amid the mayhem, Taylor screams: “The milk guy’s getting paid, the potato chip guy’s getting paid, the beer guy’s getting paid, every fucking body’s getting paid, and you look through me?” Needless to say, the guy pays up. Later, Taylor sits at the local mob bar with Matty, Chris and Johnny and observes the action. When Johnny predicts Taylor will be an equal to Uncle Teddy someday, Taylor demonstrates a weary understanding of the prejudices of the world. He wryly observes: “He’ll use me when it suits him, and he knows I’ll do the work. But I don’t get carried away with it. My mother’s a Jew, and you know what that means to them.”

After they’ve landed in Wilbaux later in the film, the foursome sit in a diner and plot how they can make whoever took the money want to return it to them without incident. Taylor is the first to speak. “We find the toughest guy here…I mean, the worst guy they got, the guy all the other guys cross the street to avoid, and we glaze this tough guy, give him the beating of his life, way past the worst he’s ever given,” Taylor advises. The other three agree, understanding that it is Taylor who will deliver the beating.

At the Shamrock bar, the guys survey the seedy bar full of locals drinking and dancing to country music. Soon, as Chris dances with a pretty waitress, the sleazy tough guy of the town, Brucker (Kevin Gage), gets up and slaps her for schmoozing with the strangers in town. Matty knows he’s found the guy they’ve looking for. “You run this place? You’re the guy I come to if I wanted to sort out some things?” he asks. “No, I’m Brucker, I’m the guy askin’ what the fuck you want. I’m also the guy who decides if your friends walk the fuck out of here or not,” Brucker replies. “Yeah, he’ll do,” Matty says to Taylor, who has been waiting behind him.

His imposing figure clad in a leather jacket and white tank top, Taylor steps up to Brucker. “500,” he says succinctly. “500 what, douche bag?” asks Brucker, spitting tobacco on his jeans. “500 fights, that’s the number I figured when I was a kid. 500 street fights and you could consider yourself a legitimate tough guy. You need them for experience. To develop leather skin. So I got started. Of course, along the way you stop thinking about being tough and all that. It stops being the point. You get past the silliness of it all. But then,” Taylor pauses to remove his leather jacket, revealing a large Star Of David tattoo on his impressive bicep, “after, you realize that’s what you are.”

Clearly shitting his pants, Brucker weakly interrupts, saying, “Look, I got no problem with you, alright?” Unmoved and clear in what he has to do to help Matty, Taylor continues: “I’ll tell you, you learn a lot of things on your way to 500, none more important than this…” As the first few bars of Steve Forbert’s “Romeo’s Tune” plays on the jukebox, Taylor viciously headbutts Bucker, sending him swiftly to the ground. As the rest of the bar looks on in horror, Brucker gets up and starts swinging, but he’s no match for the hardened Taylor, who delivers kidney shot after kidney shot to his opponent. As Matty coolly finishes his beer, Taylor continues to kick the living shit out of Brucker. The townsfolk whimper as Taylor delivers punishing punches to Bucker’s face and body. Directors Koppelman and Levien wisely let the camera linger on the impact of Taylor’s blows, letting the beating go on far longer than is comfortable for the characters and its audience.

The drastic tonal shift in this scene—introduced by Taylor’s iconic monologue— is a segue to the film’s much darker second half. It soon becomes clear that our boys are being outsmarted by forces they do not understand.