BUFFALOED (2019) is a spirited, in-your-face comedy-drama about a young woman whose hell-bent on out-hustling anyone and everyone around her as she pursues her dream of making money.

It features a tour de force performance by Zoey Deutch in the lead role and sharp funny writing by Brian Sacca. It doesn’t entirely work, but for the most part, it’s a film I liked a lot and recommend.

While made in 2019, BUFFALOED premiered on February 14, 2020, and is currently available to watch at home on Xfinity On Demand.

BUFFALOED is the story of Peg (Zoey Deutch), a young woman who from a very young age believed she had to hustle in order to make it big in life, and that’s because her dad died when she was young, and she found herself unhappy at home with her now single mom and older brother in their low-income home in Buffalo, NY, an area she describes as being dominated by Bills’ games and chicken.

When she gets accepted into college, she realizes there is no way she can pay for it and so she comes up with a scheme to scalp Bills’ tickets, a decision that lands her in jail. After serving her time, she’s contacted by debt collectors regarding the money she owes, and after a phone conversation in which she realizes she’s better at this process than the guy she’s talking to on the phone, she joins a sleazy debt collecting business run by the unsavory Wizz (Jai Courtney) with the challenge that she will become his number one debt collector.

It turns out to be true, but when Wizz fails to pay her what she is owed, she quits and launches her own debt collecting firm, hiring an eclectic crew of collectors, from people she met in prison to a Bible salesman who showed up at her door. Of course, Wizz doesn’t take kindly to the competition, and he declares an all out war on Peg and her business, a war that gets nasty, violent, and dangerous. Hence, the drama part of the story.

I have to say, I liked BUFFALOED a lot, for the two main reasons mentioned above, for Zoey Deutch’s performance and for the script by Brian Sacca.

By far, the best part of BUFFALOED is Zoey Deutch’s performance as Peg. From the opening seconds of the movie, where she screams out one giant expletive, she had me hooked, and she easily carries the rest of the movie on her back. Peg is an abrasive, obnoxious, and often raunchy young woman who is also incredibly persistent and driven, a perfect salesperson, who in this case sadly uses her talents to collect debts from people. In a lesser actor’s hands, she could have been a very unlikable character. That’s not the case here as Deutch imbues her with such oomph and drive she’s like a roller coaster ride. It nearly makes you sick but you go right back in line for more.

I first noticed Deutch in ZOMBIELAND: DOUBLE TAP (2019) where she played Jesse Eisenberg’s Columbus’ new girlfriend. She more than held her own alongside Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone, and Abigail Breslin. In fact, her performance was one of my favorite parts of that movie. She’s equally as memorable here in BUFFALOED. Zoey Deutch is an actor to watch.

I also enjoyed Jai Courtney as the villainous Wizz. While most of the film is played for laughs, Courtney’s Wizz is not. He’s a sexist bully who is an exceedingly annoying character, well-played by Courtney. While Jai Courtney has enjoyed some prominent movie roles, like Captain Boomerang in SUICIDE SQUAD (2016) and Kyle Reese in TERMINATOR GENISYS (2015), his work here in BUFFALOED may be the best thing I’ve seen him do yet.

Judy Greer plays Peg’s mom Kathy, and she’s excellent as always. She stands by her daughter even as Peg’s decisions continually hurt the family, but even she has limits, and one of the best scenes in the movie is when Kathy finally has had enough and admits to Peg she wishes she would just leave. Greer has been playing Scott Lang’s ex-wife Maggie in the ANT-MAN  movies, and she also starred as Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode’s adult daughter Karen in the recent HALLOWEEN (2018) movie.

I enjoyed the screenplay by Brian Sacca, who also stars in the movie as Sal, one of the debt collectors who works for Wizz. The strength of the screenplay is the rough and raunchy dialogue which scores high on the funny meter. I laughed a lot. It also does a fantastic job creating Peg’s character, helped of course by Zoey Deutch’s performance.

Where it doesn’t do as well however is the actual story. As much as I enjoyed the dialogue, I didn’t always believe what I was watching. For example, the plan by Peg to scalp Buffalo Bills tickets to make money for college seemed more a plot device to get her into prison than something she would actually do. And things come so easily for her later, I wasn’t always buying it.

The best part of the story and when the movie hits its stride is when Peg assembles her debt collecting staff. This array of characters are the liveliest in the movie, and I wish the story had spent more time on their antics and less on the bully tactics of Wiff and his cronies to stop them.

The love story between Peg and her attorney friend Graham (Jermaine Fowler) also didn’t really work for me, for a couple of reasons.  One, I didn’t think Graham was a particularly well-written character, as he was by far the least developed character in the movie. And also, I didn’t feel that Fowler and Deutch shared much onscreen chemistry together.

Also, for a movie that clocks in at a crisp 95 minutes, there were times, especially towards the end, where it actually dragged a bit.

Director Tanya Wexler captures the Buffalo blue-collar feel well enough, and for the most part the film possesses the same oomph as Deutch’s Peg, but it’s not quite a home run.

With the heavy-handedness of Wizz and his henchmen, the film tries to make a  statement about the debt collecting underworld, but it’s not as successful as it sets out to be. There are times where it aims for the relevance of THE BIG SHORT  (2015) and THE WOLF OF WALL STREET (2013) but it falls short of these aspirations.

Just before the end credits roll, for example, the films lists the sad statistics of how many Americans are now in debt and who now face the unceasing ire of debt collectors, a practice that remains largely unchecked and unpoliced by the U.S. government. While this statement definitely pertains to the movie’s plot, it almost seems like it belongs in a different movie, since so much of BUFFALOED was played for laughs.

For the most part, I enjoyed BUFFALOED. It’s a showcase for an up and coming actor, Zoey Deutch, and it’s got a lively and very funny script that will make you laugh even when it explores some of the darker sides of the shady practice known as debt collecting.

And it does it all with as much spice as your favorite buffalo hot sauce.

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