Review: Beauty can be an ugly business in 'Skincare,' a summer fun flick

Think "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral" with cosmetics. That's the gist of "Skincare," a scrappy new thriller just hitting theaters about the murderous business of makeup.

The criminally underrated Elizabeth Banks stars as Hope Goldman, a West Hollywood beautician who thinks it's time to start her own skin care line, no matter who she has to step on to get to the top.

Her fiercest enemy is rival facialist Angel Vergara (a deliciously devilish Luis Gerardo Méndez), who dares to open a boutique right across the street from Hope. The nerve! What kind of dirty rotten scoundrel would want to sink Hope's skin care ship? The pretty lady is ready to kill.

Hope begins her private war by guesting on the top morning TV show hosted by flirty Brett Wright (Nathan Fillion). Angel joins a sleazoid suspect list that includes Brett, the mechanic Armen (Erik Palladino), concerned cop Emerson (Jason Manuel Olazábal) and grifter life coach Jordan (a fabulous Lewis Pullman).

The dynamic scenes between Banks and Pullman, so good as Brie Larson's scientist husband on "Lessons in Chemistry," lift the film above the usual tropes that fill so many mystery-of-the-week TV programs. Chemistry? These two have it for real with notes of toxic menace.

All hell breaks loose when Hope's insults about clients, her bouts with depression and her own sexual urges go viral. The truth is, innocent Hope has been hacked, leaving her desperate to restore the image she and her business partner, Marine (Michaela Jaé Rodriguez of "Pose"), have painstakingly built into a brand. Juicy stuff, especially when her career goes bust.

All praise to Banks, who should be a bigger star by now. Just look at her exemplary work on the line between drama ("Love & Mercy," "Call Jane") and comedy (her characters in "The Hunger Games," "Charlie's Angels"), as well as the directing chops she displays in "Pitch Perfect 2" and "Cocaine Bear." Here, as a control freak losing control, Banks is sheer bonkers perfection.

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This time, the directing duties fall to feature first-timer Austin Peters, a music video wiz who sometimes lets rookie mistakes about tone and pacing clutter the already overcrowded script he wrote with Sam Freilich and Deering Regan. What Peters does achieve is momentum, taking 96 minutes of fleet screen time to catch dark deeds rotting in the LA sunlight.

Set in 2014 with appropriate makeup, costumes and mic drops, "Skincare" is very loosely based on the real story of Dawn DaLuise, a celebrity facialist who was brought to trial on allegations of a murder-for-hire scheme (she was acquitted in January 2015) where manufactured facts can hide a multitude of sins.

Beauty can be an ugly business, and Peters, with help from ace cinematographer Christopher Ripley and editor Laura Zempel, knows just how to show the fear that manifests with the appearance of even a few wrinkles. In this world, aging is scarier than any movie monster.

I don't want to set up high expectations for "Skincare" that it can't fulfill. This is not the definitive takedown of LA twits who will pay anything to feed their vanity. But it a bonbon spiked with wit and malice and just the ticket for tangy late summer fun at the movies.