Toronto 2015 Review: Van Warmerdam's SCHNEIDER VS BAX Delivers Deliciously Dark Comedy

Context may not be quite everything in life but it is almost always pretty damn important and so it should be noted that if I were to describe Alex Van Warmerdam's most recent feature film as a pleasant little diversion or a wry bit of entertainment that I would be doing so only within the context of his other work. And while the Dutch auteur's delightfully dry hitman comedy Schneider vs Bax is both of those things the larger fact is that a minor diversion for Van Warmerdam still contains more craft, more nuance, and just plain more quality than major works from a healthy majority of other directors.

This should be a very simple day for Schneider. A domestic day. His day. It is, after all, his birthday, which he intends to spend helping his wife and two lovely daughters with preparations for his own party.  But those plans are all thrown out the window with a single phone call.

"Ramon Bax must be killed," it says. "It has to happen today." And, as if to underscore the urgency, "He is a child killer." And so, with a sigh and a groan, Schneider's quiet day off is canceled and it's back to his secret life as a contract killer. If there's an upside, though, it's that Bax lives close enough that the job should be done by lunch.

Things never go as planned in this life, and that's certainly the case in the darkly constructed fantasies of Dutch auteur Alex van Warmerdam (BORGMAN), who slyly turns the hitman genre on its head with his latest effort, SCHNEIDER VS. BAX.

Bax (played by Van Warmerdam himself) turns out to be a more formidable target than first assumed, one that comes with a witness - his emotionally unstable daughter - that Schneider must deal with. Throw in a string of unanticipated obstacles and Schneider's fastidiously planned day is quickly shot to hell.

Van Warmerdam unfolds his rapidly escalating comedy of errors here with remarkable precision and craft. Though, as always, he employs a deliberately understated style - all the better to anchor his deadpan wit - his sense of geography and economy of space is truly remarkable, the seemingly matter of fact surface of the film created through meticulously detailed and choreographed camera and set work. The fact that you're not likely to notice the art department's work unless you specifically go looking for it is all the more remarkable given how incredibly complex you realize many of the shots actually are once you start noticing them, a balance of technical ability and restraint that sets Van Warmerdam apart from his peers.

Also setting Schneider vs Bax apart is Van Warmerdam's signature sense of humor, a dark dry wit that slowly escalates from the mundane to the absurd as Van Warmerdam ruthlessly tears apart family dynamics, sex and drugs along with the particularly male psychology of violence. Violence? Yes, there's some of that, too, occasionally shocking and frequently hilarious.

But what truly allows Van Warmerdam apart is his incredible skill with his performers - himself included - particularly his ability to craft deeply flawed, often foolish, and yet utterly believable and grounded characters. Van Warmerdam puts his cast through quite a lot, and asks his audience to understand and empathize with some often horrible and frequently bleak behavior throughout his body of work, and he manages it only because his performers - every single one of them - feels so utterly and truly human.

So, yes, by Van Warmerdam standards Schneider vs Bax is a relatively fluffy little romp, a piece of entertainment designed to give a bit of a laugh. Which it certainly does. But a little bit of fluff in no way means it's disposable, this is great fun put together by a true master of his craft.