BEFORE: It's too early to start adding up the total appearances for each actor in Movie Year 9 - but it's going to be hard for any actor to beat Fred Astaire, who appeared in 14 films. Hey, I said I wanted to finally get around to his films, and this year I did that, big time. As a by-product of that chain, Ginger Rogers is a strong contender for second place, with 8 appearances. I still have no idea who will come in third, but anyone who's done a lot of animation voice-work or been interviewed in geek-centric documentaries might have an inside track. (Harrison Ford could be a contender, especially if I count the archive footage from "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones" films seen in those documentaries.)
After this week, Zach Galifianakis (who carries over from "Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie" today) is going to have 6 appearances under his belt, and that's pretty good. Tonight's film also marks the 6th appearance for Jason Sudeikis, so he's also having a good year. They both tie Nick Offerman, who had a 6-film run with the animated movies ("Sing", "Ernest & Celestine", "Ice Age", "My Life as a Zucchini") and also 2 live-action appearances. So we'll have to play the rest of the games out, since I'm also expecting high numbers from late appearances by Warren Beatty, Ben Affleck, Tom Hanks and Jennifer Lawrence.
THE PLOT: A guard at an armored car company in the Southern U.S. organizes one of the biggest bank heists in American history. Based on the October 1997 Loomis Fargo robbery.
AFTER: This was another silly film about making money quickly, like yesterday's film, but this one took itself a bit more seriously, which I appreciate. Not that much, of course, but at least the characters didn't constantly break the fourth wall and giving knowing looks to the audience - but as you might expect from the director of "Napoleon Dynamite", it's filled with strange characters that are just a bit too strange to be realistic.
There's a clueless guy, David Ghantt, who works for an armored car company, and he's easily duped by Kelly, a woman who got fired from that company who hatches a scheme to rob the place, along with her friend Steve, who's the alleged "mastermind" in the title. Even though David's engaged (to another odd character), he falls for Kelly and is willing to clean out the armored car company's vault, which is a lot easier than robbing a bank, seeing as how the company trusts him with the keys.
David heads straight for Mexico with some of the cash, but most of it is kept by Steve, who keeps David away by having Kelly talk to him on the phone twice a week, constantly promising to join him in Mexico in a short time. Eventually David figures out that Kelly's not coming, and Steve first tips of his location to Interpol, then sends a hit man to take him out, because dead men can't reveal their co-conspirators.
This is based on a true story, the Loomis Fargo heist in North Carolina, but at some point the comedy deviates from the (I'm assuming) boring way that the FBI connected the dots and got the evidence they needed to indict 8 people for larceny and money laundering. Turns out that tracing phone calls and following tips probably isn't as cinematic as crashing a swanky party and blowing up some cars. I'll allow it if it makes for a funny film. (OK, I guess I'll settle for a partly funny film.)
This film falls apart at some point, and I think it's in Mexico where the hit-man finally tracks down his quarry. The reason for sparing David's life and then bonding with him is quite fishy, definitely a plot contrivance of questionable nature. It didn't follow logically, that's for sure. The same goes for how David learns about Steve's real name. This is a film that definitely stumbles toward its conclusion.
Hey, whatever happened to that heist film that was going to be set at a Comic convention? I thought up this idea independently a few years ago, only to learn that someone was already making a film like that. (It makes sense, the amount of money that these things rake is in quite astonishing...) It's still listed on the IMDB as being in the post-production phase, under the title "Supercon", but there's no release date scheduled. They'd better hurry, there aren't many release dates left in 2017 - August is usually Hollywood's dumping ground for bad films, so maybe I should be pleased it's not scheduled for release this month - but when?
Also starring Kristen Wiig (last heard in "Sausage Party"), Owen Wilson (last heard in "Cars 3"), Jason Sudeikis (last heard in "The Angry Birds Movie"), Kate McKinnon (ditto), Leslie Jones (last heard in "Sing"), Jon Daly (last seen in "Hail, Caesar!"), Mary Elizabeth Ellis (last seen in "Free State of Jones"), Ken Marino (last seen in "Gattaca"), Ross Kimball, Devin Ratray, Daniel Zacapa, with archive footage of James Coburn (last seen in "Hudson Hawk").
RATING: 4 out of 10 security cameras
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