BEFORE: I almost broke up with my comic-book shop today, the problem has been for the last few weeks, they haven't been getting all the new books in - forcing me to shop at a second comic-book store on the way home, making me walk further in the cold, making me late, etc. I understand that the shop changed hands a month ago, and the old owner probably didn't pre-order books for this month since he wasn't planning to still be in business. Still, everyone knows what issues are supposed to be released, thanks to the interwebs, and the new owner has been telling me that certain books didn't ship, and then I walk 10 blocks to another shop, where I find them. SO, either he's lying to me, or someone's lying to him - both situations are unacceptable. SO, I told him we were no longer exclusive, and that I was seeing other comic-book stores behind his back - I'm tired of sneaking around anyway, a man has needs after all. I'm willing to give the old/new store a few more weeks to get their act together, but if the shelves are still missing books next month, I've got to bounce.
Following up last night's film about a quarreling couple on a Texas ranch with this film, about a quarreling couple in...umm...wherever this one takes place.
THE PLOT: A pair of corporate spies who share a steamy past hook up to pull off the ultimate con job on their respective bosses.
AFTER: Unfortunately, this is another film that tries to be three different things - a romance story, a spy story, and a corporate story. Now I love a good double-cross (or even triple-cross) movie, but I'm quite torn about whether this constitutes a "good" example of the genre.
Once again, I've got troubles with a film that jumps around in time. Every segment begins with "10 months ago" or "5 years ago", and each new segment from the past is supposed to shed some new light on what we're seeing in the present - valuable information about character background and "the plan" is being withheld and then doled out in small pieces. Why? It's either to mess with the audience's heads, or it's done to cover up flaws in the linear storyline. Both situations are unacceptable.
As a filmmaker (or a novel writer, or a comic-book writer...) you can't expect your audience to sit at home (or in a movie theater) with charts and graphs and work on re-assembling your damn timeline because you thought it would be cute, or arty, or clever to jump around in time. I'm calling this the worst movie trend of the last decade - it worked on "Memento", but not on any of the countless knock-offs.
As more information is revealed, the second meeting between the main characters suddenly makes no sense. And then I suppose later it makes sense again, but that's beside the point.
And then we've got the plot, which I'm going to kind of dance around here - I'll just say it involves corporate secrets. Let's take any case of two major competing U.S. companies - Coke and Pepsi. Now obviously there will be some similarities in their product lines - Diet Coke, Diet Pepsi. Coke Zero, Pepsi Max. Mello Yello, Mountain Dew. And I'm willing to believe there's a certain amount of corporate espionage involved, with each company trying to get the jump on the other. But would it make more sense for Coke to spend $3 million to develop, test and market a radically new soda, or to spend $6 million on phony plans to make Pepsi believe it's working on a new product? All JUST to see how PepsiCo reacts, or perhaps to make Pepsi look foolish? (I suppose that would explain Crystal Pepsi, though...)
Isn't it more likely that Coke would just spend their money on the product development itself, and the security to protect the new formula? The best offense is a good defense, and vice versa...but this movie would have you believe otherwise.
Then we have the technology, and a very specific method of transmitting corporate data - but as the movie itself points out, there were at least 50 easier ways of getting the sensitive information out of the building, including, but not limited to, faxing it, mailing it, and folding it into a paper airplane and sailing it out the window. It seems like the writer/director is calling "shenanigans" on his own plot point - did he think I'd then leave it alone?
I might have bought into the love story here, if the two main characters weren't always at each other's throats, or trying to out-think each other at every opportunity. I understand this might be the way that spies or ex-spies think, so maybe spies shouldn't get involved with each other - it seems quite problematic.
There are plans within plans here, and good luck to any viewer trying to sort it all out - in the end certain characters are left hanging, finally figuring out how they got played. And now I know exactly how they feel. Was that the lesson?
Starring Julia Roberts (last seen in "America's Sweethearts"), Clive Owen (last seen in "The Bourne Identity"), Paul Giamatti (last seen in "Fred Claus"), and Tom Wilkinson (last seen in "Valkyrie").
RATING: 5 out of 10 frozen pizzas
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