SLEEP EASY, HUTCH RIMES

A battered figure lies in the back seat, being driven to his appointment with fate in an isolated Christmas-tree field. Meet the protagonist, insurance agent Hutchinson Rimes (Steven Weber). Cheat. Liar. Crook. Accomplice in a murder conspiracy. And probably the most innocent character on-screen in Matthew Irmas's tart, tongue-in-cheek suburban noir, whose deliciously devious plot sports more curves than, well, the sexpot office secretaries with whom “Hutch” has been conducting his serial affairs over the years, during long, lurid lunch breaks at the Sleep Easy Motel. When one of his mistresses, Holly, tries to enlist her reluctant boss in knocking off the brutish, hard-drinking and abusive husband Cotton, who makes her home life a nightmare, the scheme backfires. Severely. The repercussions from that night haunt Hutch ten years later, when the dubiously rehabilitated Cotton gets out of jail – and gloweringly comes calling on Hutch to settle an old score. “Accidents can happen!” goes the motto of the Hutch Rimes Insurance Company, but in this playfully sinister thriller there are no mere accidents.