Neighborhood Watch

The “Neighborhood Watch” of director Duncan Skiles’s crime-thriller is comprised of just two men, ostensibly mismatched next-door neighbors Simon McNally (Jack Quaid) and Ed Deerman (Jeffrey Dean Morgan). Suffering from what appears to be schizophrenia, plagued by voices in his head, Simon has been institutionalized for a decade to no real medical or mental breakthrough, and since released. That 10-year gap in his resume means he can’t get a job, like one at a diner, where he bombs an interview as the movie begins, desperate to re-enter a society that won’t have him. His past also means the police brush him off when he comes to them claiming to have seen a woman abducted in van. Ed is ready to brush him off too when Simon seeks his help, having heard that Ed used to be a cop, or something. That something was a campus security guard, a position from which he has reluctantly retired, though in his introductory scene, he is still prowling the university cafeteria for would-be offenders. This is played for broad comedy, though it belies Morgan effecting both an indignant and melancholy air of someone who wanted to be a cop and never was. And though Ed hardly believes Simon any more than the real police, he agrees to help, seemingly as determined to playact his own man in blue fantasy as find this missing mystery woman.

The script for “Neighborhood Watch” is Sean Farley’s first, but it does not always feel that way, fitting exposition into believable exchanges and situations, and crucially never treating Simon’s mental illness with anything other than respect. Oh, Ed makes plenty of cruel jokes at Simon’s expense, but coming from the character as written and played, these jokes make sense, and work to underline the hard time Simon has navigating a society that’s quick to make him a punchline. Farley also utilizes innumerable set-ups and payoffs, some obvious but some unexpectedly enlightening, none more than Ed’s punch card at a diner working his way toward a free dinner. Skiles tends to favor long shots, letting us see the characters inhabit their different spaces, and presenting a world that feels very lower middle class, people struggling to fit in and hang on. And when Ed offers that punch card to a bus driver (Maggie Ballard) when they can’t afford the fare, her eager acceptance feels less like a joke than a quiet evocation of that struggle.

In fact, “Neighborhood Watch” does a better job of this innate world building than it does in conveying the seedy underworld where Simon and Ed’s investigation ultimately leads them. That lack of detail holds the movie back to some degree but also puts into perspective how the real throughline is Ed and Simon unwittingly developing a support system. Crucially, Farley’s script does not overdo that idea, the resolution of the case not magically yielding a resolution of their emotional, mental, and physical problems. Those will still have to be dealt with long after the credits roll. Instead, the final moments movingly suggest nothing more than the thrill of being able to matter.