Pantoliano Is All Moxie as ‘Taxman’ Who Would Be Sleuth

Where would crime thrillers be without the amateur sleuth who pokes his or her nose into places where professional investigators are too stupid to tread?

Muscling into a field already dense with rabbis, Girl Scouts and little old ladies from St. Mary Mead is Al Benjamin (Joe Pantoliano), the eponymous Brighton Beach tax investigator of “The Taxman,” who is looking for glory amid the number-crunching tedium of his daily routine. When six gas merchants are rubbed out in a bloody back-office slaughter, Al anoints himself crusading gumshoe over the sneering objections of his boss and the police captain on the case. The more abrasive their objections, the more certain we are that Al will get his man.

Al is abetted by Joseph Romero (Wade Dominguez), a hapless police trainee whose ineptness at basic cop duties is counterbalanced by enterprise, detective savvy and a proficiency in Russian. The latter talent helps the two worm their way into the complex network of Russian emigre mobsters behind the crime.

“The Taxman” is co-written by Israeli director Avi Nesher and Robert Berger, a tax investigator whose experiences provided grist for this. For all of the greasy-knish authenticity lent by Nesher’s Brighton Beach locales and Berger’s insider knowledge, the high-concept premise (crude misfit tax investigator joins forces with poetic misfit cop) has the hit-machine aura of something whipped together by L.A. studio execs over avocado sandwiches and banana smoothies.

As TV pilot wannabes go, “The Taxman” finds an incalculable asset in the garrulous and frequently alienating persona of its antihero. Given a rudely funny, bull-in-a-china-shop moxie by Pantoliano, Al is the consummate brash New Yorker, crashing into strangers’ quarrels and sidewalk deliveries with a sense of entitlement that is jaw-dropping to behold. Diminutive of frame and speaking with a pinched Brooklynese that suggests Ratso Rizzo’s bureaucrat relation, Al is a mouse who roars far louder than he seems capable of at first glance. Pantoliano is so quirkily charismatic that Robert Townsend, playing a federal prosecutor Al shanghais into taking on his case, all but fades into the woodwork.

Not to be discounted is the eager-beaver charm of Dominguez (“Dangerous Minds”), a graceful actor whose leading-man promise was cut short when he died of respiratory failure last year.

* MPAA rating: R for graphic violence and strong language. Times guidelines: rough language and violence.

‘The Taxman’

Joe Pantoliano: Al Benjamin

Wade Dominguez: Joseph Romero

Elizabeth Berkley: Nadia Rubakov

Michael Chiklis: Andre Rubakov

Robert Townsend: Peyton Cody

Counterclock Pictures, in association with Open City Films presents a film by Avi Nesher, released by Phaedra Cinema. Director Avi Nesher. Written by Avi Nesher & Roger Berger. Producers Avi Nesher & Kathy Jordan. Executive producer Pascal Borno. Director of photography Jim Denault. Production designer Michael Krantz. Editor Alexander Hall. Costume designer Carolyn Grifel. Music by Roger Neill. Running time: 1 hour, 44 minutes.

In general release.