In Buster Keaton’s Cops (1922), the silent-film star sidesteps two officers so that they bonk each other on the head and pass out. It’s still funny as hell—slapstick comedy in its purest form. And if there’s anything entertainers have learned since the first fool slipped on a banana peel, it’s that nothing is funnier than a clown.
It’s my pleasure to inform you that this particular brand of comedy hasn’t lost its charm. In the stellar new film Anora, director Sean Baker (Red Rocket) homes in on a specific species of clown genealogy: the henchmen. You may know them as goons. They’re buffoonish yes-men who begrudgingly follow orders and lament their lowly status in the criminal hierarchy. Honestly, goons are my favorite characters in just about any medium. But Mob grunts have not been this funny since The Sopranos’ Michael Imperioli and Tony Sirico ate mayonnaise packets to survive a night in the woods in the famous “Pine Barrens” episode. No disrespect to the Sopranos cast, Deadwood’s William Sanderson, or Goodfellas’ Joe Pesci, but we need to carve out some space on the Mount Rushmore of comedy gangsters.
If this is somehow the first time you’re learning of Anora, the film follows an exotic dancer and sex worker named Anora (Mikey Madison)—or “Ani,” as the character prefers. She falls in love with one of her clients, Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), a Russian billionaire’s son, who parties 24/7, wastes away his parents’ money, and orgasms so quickly it seems like Anora’s barely even working. It’s young love. Unlimited cash. But when the couple get married in Vegas, shit hits the fan.
Enter stage left: three of the goddamn funniest goons you’ve ever seen onscreen. There’s Toros (Karren Karaguilan), Ivan’s godfather, who swears far more than an Orthodox priest ever should; Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan), the Armenian muscle who can’t make a single decision for himself; and Igor (Yura Borisov), the quiet and pouty grandma’s boy who just wishes that he’d stayed home on any given day.
Ivan’s parents call in the hilarious trio to force the young couple to annul their marriage and rid their family’s name of the scandalous pairing. Unsurprisingly, Ivan bolts out the door when they arrive. Anora freaks out, battering the goons as if she were starring in a particularly violent episode of Tom & Jerry. Garnick breaks his nose, falls over, and shatters a glass table. Igor, uh, is bitten! Toros just stands gobsmacked at the chaos before him. If this took place in the Looney Tunes–verse, all three of them would have foot-long welts growing out of the tops of their skulls and tiny birds circling their heads. I loved every minute of it.
The trio hop in a car to form a search party for Ivan—and, of course, this is when shit really hits the fan. Toros denies Garnick a trip to the hospital to fix his broken nose, so Garnick takes painkillers and throws up all over Toros’s car. Later, Toros bolts into a restaurant and berates its patrons about Ivan’s whereabouts. Here’s a fun fact: The diners are real people who have no idea that they’re in a movie. An angry customer curses them out in Russian, screaming, “How many times have I told you I haven’t seen the kid? We’re trying to have dinner here!” Baker jokingly told Vulture of that very real moment, “They wanted to help him find his lost son.”
The film taps into a style reminiscent of the Safdie brothers’ Uncut Gems (2019), in which relatively unknown actors and average Joes take on comedic bit parts. Anora’s gangster trio have considerably more acting experience than Wayne Diamond or the real-life jewellers in Gems. But they still excel in lapping up laugh after laugh because they feel like real guys. Their conceived relative obscurity is part of the joke—and falling on their asses every now and then doesn’t hurt, either.
Of course, the central couple bear the emotional weight of Anora. I’m sure that if you’ve heard anything about the Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or winner already, it’s likely the film’s nonjudgmental view of sex work, the ending (which I won’t spoil here), or Mikey Madison’s electric lead performance. I’m positive you’ve read about its Oscar buzz as well. It’s all true! But Anora’s most dramatic highlights wouldn’t hit quite as hard without the humour in between.
Anora’s situation is terrifying. She marries into a family she knows nothing about and is essentially kidnapped until the gangsters can sort out their annulment. Baker has crafted an otherwise horrifying predicament for a young woman. Thankfully, the filmmaker doesn’t go to truly dark places; instead, the character’s unwillingness to grasp the trouble she’s in is played for laughs. The three stooges fail repeatedly. They are just as confused as she is—and they keep audiences from ever feeling like Anora is in any true danger. Call them the villains, but my three new favourite goons are Anora’s real heroes.