Diksha Sundriyal
Netflix’s ’72 Hours’ brings back Kevin Hart in a comedy that gets chaotic by the minute. The premise has a middle-aged man joining the bachelor party of a complete stranger with the intention of furthering his career. However, things take one shocking turn after another, and the situation spirals out of control even as the group tries to keep everything together. And then, a drug cartel gets involved, which brings an unprecedented level of danger into the mix. At the end of the day, however, the group is forced to reckon with the reality of their present and what they want their future to be. SPOILERS AHEAD.
72 Hours Plot Synopsis
Joe Nixon is at the top of his game. He has spent 10 years as an ad executive and has reached the point where Adweek has done a full-blown profile of him. He has a beautiful girlfriend with whom he has recently moved on, and there is a new vodka campaign that will finally get him the promotion that he has been vying for. But all of this turns out to be an illusion. At work, he discovers that he is so out of touch with the current generation of consumers that his boss either wants him to learn how to sell to them or lose his promotion and, potentially, his job. Fortunately, earlier that morning, Joe discovered that he had been added to a bachelor party group chat of four twenty-somethings.
He was going to ignore this fluke, but now, it feels like a perfect opportunity to understand his audience firsthand. He notes that they don’t have enough money to rent a proper place for the weekend, so he offers to do it for them, in exchange for joining the party. The group agrees to it, and soon enough, Joe is in Miami with them. However, this trip also comes at the cost of his relationship. His girlfriend, Jen, has been holding back on her emotions about how they are stuck at one point, and Joe doesn’t seem too keen on taking their relationship to the next level. She becomes even more frustrated when she gets a false impression of a proposal from Joe, only to discover that he is going to spend the weekend with complete strangers.
In Miami, Joe meets the groom-to-be, Mason, his best man, Nick, their recently heartbroken friend, Hunter, and their easygoing friend, Freshman. The men confess they hadn’t thought Joe would actually show up, but they welcome him with open arms. They find it a bit weird that he has brought his own vodka and that he wishes to make videos of them drinking it. They decide no one will use their phone for the rest of the trip, but thanks to Joe’s friend and colleague, Barry, he has a pair of glasses and a chain with cameras on them. This gives Joe the opportunity to get plenty of raw footage of them. However, things escalate when he does cocaine, his alter ego of Ricardo Montana comes out, and he inadvertently makes an enemy of a drug cartel.
Why does the Drug Lord Let Joe Go?
Picking a fight with a criminal, let alone a drug lord, is dangerous in itself, but when Joe does cocaine and becomes Ricardo Montana, he loses all sense of self-preservation. He sees himself as an invincible man, adopting a Latino accent, and punches well above his weight. Ricardo Montana first comes out in the boat that Joe takes the group on, after showing an accidentally stolen police badge to gain entry. It is noted by the owner of the boat, Jaze, who turns out to be the son of a drug dealer, and coincidentally, also the person who rented his place to Joe and his group. To confirm that he is not a police officer, Joe is forced to do two lines of cocaine that activate his alter ego. As Ricardo Montana comes into action, Joe ends up doing things he wouldn’t even dream of as himself.
When the chaos gets too much, he and the group take the jet skis to flee, not knowing that there are millions of dollars’ worth of cocaine hidden in them. This puts them on Jaze’s radar, and he actively looks for them around town, but it isn’t until much later that he realizes that Joe is the person who is currently living in one of his rented properties. By the time his goons reach there, Joe has already left. He had an argument with the group, who recently discovered he had been filming them without their consent for his ad campaign. When Joe returns, he discovers that Mason has been taken away by the goons who want their drugs back, and the problem is that they will talk to no one but Ricardo Montana. The group realizes the drugs are in the jet ski, and Joe takes enough to activate his alter ego.
They meet at the rendezvous point with the drugs, but the problem is that the drugs have worn out, and now it’s just Joe. When the drug lord, Jaze’s father, sees them, he realizes he has been mistaken. Sure enough, Joe confesses that he is no drug lord, but just a man going through a midlife crisis. If that wasn’t amusing enough for the drug lord, he notes that Joe is wearing his father’s clothes, which he borrowed from the closet he wasn’t supposed to open. In any other case, the drug lord would have killed Joe and his friends, but the clothes remind him of his father and melt his heart. Moreover, he has his drugs, and no harm was done, so he decides to let Joe and the group go. Before they leave, he tells them that nothing is more important than family and whatever they do next should be in service of the ones they love.
Does Joe Get the Promotion? Does He Marry Jen?
At the beginning of the movie, Joe had been so engrossed in his career that he didn’t give enough time to Jen. He kept her on the hook about a marriage proposal, and then she discovered he was doing cocaine in Miami with some random strangers, including girls, which convinced her that he was not serious about their relationship. So, she decides to move out of the apartment and break things off with him. However, over the course of the trip, Joe has come to realize that not only does he love Jen, but he also wants to spend the rest of his life with her. By the end of the trip, he also doesn’t get to make the ad, but fortunately, Nick does the job for him. He makes the perfect ad that meets all the requirements of Joe’s company.
Now, Joe will surely get the promotion. However, when he returns to New York, he decides not to go to work. While his boss waits for him at the meeting, wondering when, if at all, he will show up, Barry tries to assure them he will. However, Joe lets him know that he is done working for a company that does not appreciate him. Earlier in the film, when he shared his concerns with Barry about losing his job to someone much younger than them, Barry reminded him he had always wanted to start his own ad company. At the time, Joe said he didn’t want to do it because he didn’t have the confidence to leave a job he had worked for a decade. But by the end of the film, he goes through such a drastic change that he decides that it is time for him to take that step.
While he has the ad that could win him the campaign, Joe doesn’t share it with his company. Instead of going to work, he runs home to Jen, who is in the middle of moving away. He finds her just in time, confessing his love for her, and assuring her he will do better. He also tells her he has quit his job, and as the CEO of his own company, he will have much more time at hand as he won’t be at anyone’s beck and call. Jen decides to give him another chance, and three weeks later, they are engaged. At Mason’s wedding, we see Jen looking at the ring on her finger. And in the end, Joe reveals that it is time to plan his own bachelor party now. Moreover, it is revealed that he has hired Nick, and Barry has joined them, too. Now, Joe has his dream job and his dream wife. Life is perfect, but that doesn’t mean more chaos cannot yet happen.
Read More: Where Was 72 Hours Filmed? All Shooting Locations
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