Stranglehold

Financial troubles seem to always follow Bailey (Ashley Benson) and her husband Tim (Jake Lacy). When their infant daughter Jordan (Gabriella Pabellon and Isabella Pabellon) gets sick with an ear infection, the couple can’t afford her antibiotics or Christmas gifts. Bailey asks the owner of the local strip club, Junior (Justin Long), if she can pick up extra shifts over the holiday season. When her request is rejected, Tim plans to rob the club on Christmas Eve to guarantee high cash flow and save Christmas for his family.

Best known for playing Jacob in the Hot Tub Time Machine films, Clark Duke brings an action-packed dark comedy to the screen with Stranglehold. In his sophomore outing as director, he also co-wrote the screenplay alongside his brother Chandler Duke and Billington Garrett. Working with an indie budget in the $3 to $6 million range, the film packs serious star power and a lot of firepower.

Dale takes aim with a scoped rifle as another gunman backs him up in Stranglehold.

“Financial troubles seem to always follow Bailey and her husband Tim.”

In addition to Benson and Lacy, many recognizable faces join the cast of this holiday heist. Justin Long oozes predatory seediness as the sleazy, entitled club owner Junior. Joining the fray is veteran screen actor Ron Perlman (Hellboy, Sons of Anarchy). As Junior’s father, Roger, Perlman commands the screen like a battle-tested sage, delivering sharp, caustic pearls of underworld wisdom with his signature deadpan gravitas. Serving as slapstick comedic relief amid all the chaos are low-level security guard Leon (co-writer Chandler Duke) and his girlfriend Taylor (Elle King), a club front-desk worker resentful that management has sidelined her from ever becoming an official dancer.

The deep, saturated neons of the strip club interior cut through the smoky haze with a true Tarantino sensibility, courtesy of director of photography Damian Horan. Leaning into Southern Gothic textures and Americana decay—from cluttered kitchen counters covered in unpaid bills to rusted mobile homes—the entire aesthetic is exceptionally well executed, immersing the audience in the bleak world Benson and Lacy inhabit. The moody soundtrack by Theresa Wayman of indie rock band Warpaint truly brings it all home.

Stranglehold is a highly quotable, raucous fun time. A true popcorn flick if there ever was one, and that is meant as high praise here. It’s an unapologetically bloody, darkly comic slice of holiday chaos that never takes its foot off the gas.