Gripping crime thriller with 96% on Rotten Tomatoes now streaming at home

From the director of the shows Fargo and Friday Night Lights, this 2024 movie is a must-see for fans of classic film noir.

Armen does not take kindly to Don's request to pay his debt. Instead, he offers - and then threatens - the ex-con into completing a criminal job for him, in exchange for the money.

Don is tasked with killing Phyllis (Carrie Coon, The White Lotus), Armen's girlfriend and business partner. The gangster believes she has become untrustworthy.

Abducting and then dragging Phyllis out into the desert, Don is unable to pull the trigger. It's then that the charming, wily Phyllis proposes a new plan that would allow her and Don to get one over on Armen and start a new life.

Co-starring Max Casella (Inside Llewyn Davis) as Armen's henchman Harout, Lake George was written and directed by Jeffrey Reiner, a TV veteran who worked on such shows as The Affair, Fargo, and Friday Night Lights.

With its California setting (full of lavish houses and desert vistas), its wonderfully hard-bitten protagonists, and its pleasantly stripped-down crime plot built more around character than set-pieces, the movie is a great throwback to the classic film noirs of the 1940s and 50s. Yet, it's more than a pastiche thanks to the wonderful work of its two leads.

Don may not be the most chatty of men. Yet, just in the way Whigham exhales and shuffles around, the audience feels the weight of the anti-hero's guilt and shame, the culmination of a series of very bad choices and mistakes.

Phyllis, on the other hand, can talk for both of them. She's energetic, lively, and darkly funny, benefiting from Coon's megawatt charisma. That said, there is a lingering question as to whether this is Phyllis' true self or an act to charm Don and get what she wants out of the situation.

It's this element, as well as Coon and Whigham's natural easygoing charisma as they embark on their off-kilter road trip/crime spree, that keeps the audience compelled right up until the movie's surprisingly emotionally stirring closing moments.

Holding a 96% Rotten Tomatoes score, Lake George is streaming on the service NOW.