Vince Vaughn in Nic Pizzolatto’s Feature Debut

Easy’s Waltz, the new film from True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto, makes good on about half the promise of its title. Pizzolatto keeps his film light on friction, ambling at an easy, lackadaisical pace. I’m not sure the movie ever really waltzes, though. That would require more grace and timing, which Pizzolatto’s script and direction only exhibit on occasion. Still, there is something charming in the way the film refuses to up its ante. It’s like running into someone at a bar who’s too tired to get up to say hello, so they wave you over to their table and sit you down for a meandering, ultimately pointless, but fitfully engaging story. 

Vince Vaughn, plodding and weary-eyed, plays Easy, a Vegas nightclub singer who’s just trying to do respectable work in whatever venue will have him. His far jumpier, more hustling brother, Sam (Simon Rex), acts as his manager while cooking up other schemes on the side. Neither guy is making much traction, drifting further into middle age as purchaseless as they might have been 20 years prior.

Opportunity comes in the form of a grizzled old Strip rat, Mickey Albano (Al Pacino), who used to be a performer and now runs entertainment for the glitzy Wynn resort. He takes a shine to Easy’s throwback style and offers him a big gig. 

Because we’ve seen movies before, we have a hunch that Sam, darting around his brother with dollar signs in his eyes, is probably going to screw things up somehow. He’s chasing after Mickey’s girl, Lucy (Kate Mara), for one thing, never a good idea when the other man in the equation is old enough to remember the mob days of Vegas. 

Pizzolatto is only willing to ramp up the action so far, though. Things do go awry, there is a mild rash of violence, some people even yell for a brief moment or two. Otherwise, Easy’s Waltz moseys unbothered through its retro vision of America’s weirdest city, with its crooners and magicians, its barflies and tinted glasses-wearing bosses. It’s all pleasant enough, but one wishes that something would get the movie’s blood up just a little. Pizzolatto is perhaps overly determined to avoid any of the dark ornateness that so defined his three seasons of True Detective. Maybe he’s tired, too. 

What is meant to energize the audience, I assume, is the music, an array of pop songs like “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” and Pat Benatar’s “We Belong” that have been slowed down to wistful effect. Easy isn’t so much lounge lizard as lounge lamb; he’s routinely kind and empathetic, a quality reflected in the sincere way he sings his songs. Vaughn has a great voice for karaoke, but his chops aren’t quite credible as some of the best in Las Vegas (as is said about Easy’s singing from time to time throughout the film). It’s especially not believable when a snippet of one of Easy’s performances goes viral on YouTube — Easy’s Waltz is yet another film that seems to have a very limited understanding of what makes things pop online these days, but uses it as a plot device anyway. 

What really rescues the film from tedium are its jags of sharp dialogue and the laid-back smoothness of its performances. Vaughn is appealing in this passive, more sober mode, reminding us of his earlier work as a dramatic actor before all the antic Frat Pack stuff got started. Mara remains a welcome presence, warm and flinty at once, even if her character here is woefully underwritten. Pacino is doing something slightly more than autopilot; it’s a pleasure to watch him take curlicue approaches to his line readings. Rex, only a few years into a pretty remarkable career reinvention, once again shows his prowess as a capable indie film actor. 

It’s a good group, all careful to remain within the delicate bounds of Pizzolatto’s understated framing. There’s an offbeat amiability to Easy’s Waltz that wouldn’t have been possible had nearly every actor involved not been on board with the modest aims of its filmmaker. Only Mary Steenburgen, playing Easy and Sam’s harridan mess of a mother, brings the theatrics, but I think that’s more Pizzolatto’s fault than Steenburgen’s.

As a director, Pizzolatto doesn’t attempt much in the way of flash. Just the opposite, really. The technicals of the film can be clunky, especially its austere sound design. Some of the nightclub scenes play as if not a single cube of ice is clinking in a glass anywhere in the joint, no conversation is happening at a table just off camera. It’s only the characters talking and the rest is silence. That gives Easy’s Waltz a strangely amateurish vibe, as if Vince Vaughn and Al Pacino have somehow stumbled into someone’s student film.

But, hey, that’s okay. If Vaughn, who co-starred on season two of True Detective, once told Pizzolatto about his love of singing and the filmmaker wanted to give him a platform to do that, that’s a perfectly nice reason for a movie to exist. Easy’s Waltz is a harmless, fleeting curio, a piece of ephemera that lilts by like a song that isn’t quite catchy enough to get stuck in your head — it has the decency to do its thing and then leave us alone.