Buffaloed: a manic Zoey Deutch in top form

Buffaloed is a chaotic comedy starring Zoey Deutch in a frantic quest for the biggest, best, money making scheme she can find. All she wants to do is make money.

Buffaloed takes place in Buffalo. This means there are numerous discussions about the best source of wings and the best sauce for wings, the Bills, and an actual rotting buffalo head in Peg’s (Zoey Deutch) living room.

Peg lives with her mom (Judy Greer) and her brother JJ (Noah Reid). When she isn’t living in prison, that is. The movie begins with her being thrown in prison. She might have gotten off if her lawyer hadn’t attacked the judge.

When Peg got out of the clink, she started looking for a new way to earn money. She fell in with a debt collection outfit run by Wizz (Jai Courtney). Did you know that Buffalo is the biggest debt collection location in the US? Peg was fantastic at debt collecting. She outdid everyone else. But Wizz gave her only a tiny bit of what she’d earned.

The Assistant DA who sent Peg to jail, Graham (Jermaine Fowler), was after the crew working for Wizz. He did some illegal things while getting money out of people in debt.

Peg decided that staying close to the enemy was the best policy and started an affair with Graham. They were really cute together, except that she was mainly manipulating him for her own schemes.

Peg decided to leave Wizz and start her own debt collecting group. She hired ex-cons, street hustlers, phone sex workers – anyone with a good line for separating people from their money.

They were raking it in. But Wizz was not nice to his competition. Very troublesome, that guy. Graham kept trying to be an honest lawyer. Her mother didn’t want her “dirty” money. Peg was a bit stressed out from all of it.

Zoey Deutch was genius at playing this character who was wired at the best of times, and got really hyper when things were stressful.

Tanya Wexler directed this wild ass romp through the culture of debt collection. Even though the film was a comedy, it was also an exposé of the business of debt collection. Some info at the end of the film said that most debts in American come from medical bills and student loans. After all the zany action in the film, it was nice to see some connection at the end of the real problem with debt in modern society.

I wouldn’t call Buffaloed a great film, but it was interesting and well done. Educational, even. It’s currently streaming on Hulu.