Cornbread Cosa Nostra

In the late Eighties, an FBI sting led to the arrest of several prominent members of the Dixie Mafia, known locally as the Cornbread Cosa Nostra. Travis Mills' latest film draws on these events and, though clearly labelled as fiction, has apparently hit close enough to the mark that some cast members received threats over their participation in it.

The story follows Kurt (Britton Webb), an ambitious young agent who grew up on the Gulf Coast and has long nurtured a desire to clean up his hometown. His plan is complicated by an encounter with Beth (Summer Baldwin), who has blossomed since he knew her in childhood, but who is clearly close to some of the people he needs to investigate. His identity and mission are no secret from them - he's not so foolish as to think he could get away with that - but of course, they can't afford to harm him too obviously for fear of bringing the full might of the agency to town.

Even the Italian Mafia's US offshoot became notorious for poor management over this period, and the Cornbread mob isn't a real Mafia at all, just a collection of criminals without the familial bonds needed to ensure loyalty or the hierarchical structure needed to direct operations. Records suggest that they were about as dangerous to each other as to anyone else. Understanding this is important because Mills' film doesn't really explain why we're confronted with such an oddball collection of characters - it is, perhaps, made a little too much with local people in mind. Early in the film we are confronted with the world's least discreet hitman, who seems to have modelled himself on the Joker but then addled his brains with crack. We subsequently meet a politician in a bad blond wig who keeps promising to make the area great again - as in other recent films, the joke falls flat because it's too heavily laboured and it isn't really possible to satirise somebody as scattershot as Donald Trump.

There's an entertaining late stage appearance by Cotton Yancey (who previously worked with Mills on Porches And Private Eyes), whose elegantly twirled moustache is almost worth the price of admission in its own right. Otherwise, the characters mostly depend on their gimmicks rather than being imbued with any memorable personality. Baldwin tries to make something of her underwritten role but Webb is a bit of a nonentity, making it hard to care what happens to his character.

Overall, the pace of the film is too slow, the action scenes too few and far between to maintain the energy that a film like this needs. It also suffers from a really intrusive and repetitive score; often silence or ambient noise would be more effective and give the actors more opportunity to create atmosphere. What might have been a snappy drama ends up feeling too much like a low budget TV history programme.