BEFORE: Since last night's film was about organized crime, here's the rebuttal, I guess. Linking from "Miller's Crossing", John Turturro was also in "He Got Game" with Denzel Washington, who was also in this year's "Safe House" with Ruben Blades (last seen in "The Devil's Own").
THE PLOT: Top thiefs, looking to steal money from a bank, have many blunders on the way. Meanwhile, a member of their group is missing and two cops chase after him.
AFTER: Jeez, it was hard to tell who was the most inept in this one - the crooks, the city cops, or the rural Montana cops. No, maybe it was the guy who set up the whole caper, and then got himself arrested, so his gang is forced to go ahead with the robbery without him. Yeah, I'll go with that.
It would be too easy to just say, "Oh, I hate slapstick" and write this one off, so I'm not going to do that. There is physical humor, but it's not really done with a completely comical tone - it's more like what's seen in a Coen Brothers film. (Not "Miller's Crossing", I mean a good one, like "Fargo" or "Raising Arizona") Things do go wrong, people do get hurt, or at least very inconvenienced - but it feels more like Murphy's Law rather than broad farcical comedy.
From a script standpoint, this felt sort of half-written. As if the screenwriter wrote down the key plot points, and then depended on the actors to ad-lib a lot of the dialogue. I draw this conclusion after noticing many instances of actors repeat their lines over and over again, with slightly different emphasis. Ex. "What are we going to do? Well, what ARE we going to do?"
Mixed in are some of the same elements that you'd see in a classic heist film (like, say, "The Italian Job"). The team is put together, consisting of a safecracker, an explosives expert, a weapons man, and a driver. Oh, yeah, and the criminal mastermind, but as stated, he's absent for one reason or another for most of the film. That hardly seems fair, but it forces the other team members to put their differences aside and come up with a new plan. There's some initial sparring between the different personalities on the team, but they don't try to kill each other, like in some other films I could name. Perhaps that's unrealistic, but it makes for a more positive film.
Still, I have to remember these are anti-heroes, thieves and ex-cons. It's so easy to get turned around on some of these things when the criminals are the main characters, and you spend some time with them and learn they're not such bad folk. Inept, perhaps, but they mean well. See, I did it again - these guys don't mean well at all.
A plot point here prompts me to ask a question - has any criminal ever tried to pay his bail with stolen money? It must have happened some time, right? So if someone is accused of stealing, say, 2 million dollars, why not just set his bail at 2 million and check the cash once he pays it? If he pays in small bills, that's like an admission of guilt, the money gets paid back, and the state is saved the cost of a trial. That works, right? You're welcome.
Clearly, I've lost all rational detachment, and I'm too close to my subect matter once again. But I'm out of heist/caper films - and I didn't even get to "Fun with Dick and Jane" or a couple other notables ones. The reason is - I've got about a 3 or 4 week window once I know for sure I'm going to cover a certain topic, during which I can add extra films on that topic if need be. However, I now think I may have added a couple too many films on the fly to the last few topics, I may have to cut something to get my schedule in line with upcoming holidays.
Also starring Corbin Bernsen (last seen in "Radioland Murders"), Lou Diamond Philips (last seen in "Hollywood Homicide"), Fred Gwynne (last seen in "The Cotton Club"), Ed O'Neill (last seen in "Lucky Numbers"), Hoyt Axton, William Russ, Daniel Roebuck.
RATING: 5 out of 10 footprints
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