Cheerless 'Night Always Comes' powerful vehicle for Vanessa Kirby

Recently released on Netflix, "Night Always Comes" is part crime thriller, part family drama (all parts depressing). The film is a vehicle to allow Vanessa Kirby to showcase her acting chops. It's far from a happy-go-lucky film, but it is moving and powerful.Lynette (Vanesa Kirby) lives in a run-down house in Portland, Oregon with her mother Doreen (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and her brother Kenny (Zach Gottsagen), who has Down syndrome. The house is nothing special. In fact, it's pretty bad. But it's all they have. The family has nowhere else to go. Even so, they are seven weeks behind on the mortgage payments.Lynette made a deal with a shady mortgage company to allow her to buy the house. Even with two jobs, she can't buy the home on her own. The mortgage company needs a $25,000 down payment and Doreen to cosign. Doreen, who doesn't appear to have a job or any kind of income, somehow has the money for the down payment.Lynette is both shocked and not at all surprised when Doreen misses the appointment at the mortgage company to sign the papers and pay the money. The company gives Lynette 24 hours to get the money and Doreen's signature, or it will sell to another buyer. Then she learns that Doreen spent the money on a down payment for a new car.Distraught, Lynette has 24 hours to come up with $25,000. She calls a businessman that's a friend of hers. A friend who occasionally pays her for sex. He laughs at her when she asks for the money. He's not laughing when she steals his car.Lynette embarks on a long night filled with madness and sadness as she tries to get the $25,000 needed to secure her family's future. Hopefully she lives to see the future.Desperation. That's what fuels Lynette and that's what fuels the film. The story is told over the course of one interminable 24-hour period that gets crazier as the night goes on. Lynette is in a terrible position. She needs to save her family, especially Kenny. Their house is not clean or in a good neighborhood, but it's all they have.Vanessa Kirby is a master. Whether she is playing a criminal in the "Mission: Impossible" movies, Princess Margaret in "The Crown," Josephine Bonaparte in "Napoleon" or a superhero in "The Fantastic Four: First Steps," she always brings her A game. Kirby is electric as Lynette. It's important to understand that Lynette is not a good person (no one in the film is other than Kenny). She's involved in theft, robbery, selling drugs, assault and maybe even murder. Yet, somehow Kirby convinces you to root for her as the night deepens. That's her genius in this movie.Desperation makes Lynette take risks that only get more dangerous as the night goes on. Instead of digging herself out of trouble, she causes more problems. Everyone but Lynette sees that she is spiraling. She isn't digging herself out of a hole, she's only making the hole deeper.The B story in the film involves the downtrodden and hopeless city of Portland. The filmmakers highlight not only Lynette's precarious economic position, but that of the entire city. Lynette's plight is a harbinger of what's to come for Portland. While her situation is an economic reality for many people and I understand the point being made, a sense of suffocating despair hangs over the entire movie. There's too much sorrow in the film.Desperation breeds desperate acts. That sums up the movie. Vanessa Kirby is fantastic, but don't overlook the work of Zach Gottsagen who plays the lovable and loving Kenny perfectly. He's the one decent character in the entire film. Paired with Kirby, the two make a formidable acting team that makes this cheerless movie worth watching.Grade: B+Rated R for language throughout, some sexual content, drug content, and violence.•••Bradley Griffith is a local attorney and longtime film buff.