Fast Charlie is a 2023 American independent Southern noir crime thriller film directed by Phillip Noyce and written by Richard Wenk, who based his screenplay on the 2001 pulp novel Gun Monkeys by Victor Gischler. It stars Pierce Brosnan, Morena Baccarin and James Caan in his final film role.
It premiered at the 2023 Mill Valley Film Festival on October 7, 2023. The film was released in select theatres and video on demand on December 8, 2023.
Contents
Plot
Present: The film starts with Charlie stripping down at a car junkyard and narrating that he expected this kind of thing to happen sooner or later.
Past: Charlie Swift is a retired Marine Corps Officer living in Biloxi, Mississippi. For twenty years, Charlie has been a fixer and hitman for a mob boss named Stan Mullen. Beggar is another mob boss who is based from New Orleans and serves as the crew chief of the 9th ward. Charlie is paired up with Blade by Stan to kill Rollo Kramer and take his body to Beggar. However, a clumsy Blade sets off a bomb planted in a donut box delivered to Rollo severing his head off. They take the body in their car to visit Marcie Kramer, ex-wife of Rollo, working as a taxidermist, to identify him for which she shows a tattoo on his back. Blade holds Charlie and Marcie at gunpoint and takes Rollo away to get all the cash for himself, only to accidentally shoot himself in his head and crash the car at an electric post, destroying Rollo's body. Since Rollo's body cannot be used anymore, Marcie, with the help of a tattoo artist makes the same tattoo on Blade's back and Charlie severs his head off. Charlie takes this body to Beggar who checks his back for the tattoo and feeds the body to his crocodiles. He then says to Charlie that he wants to talk to Stan about new businesses.