BEFORE: Well, I ran out of Uma Thurman movies (thank God, those last two were terrible) so now Minnie Driver carries over from "Motherhood".
I've moved on from playing "Grand Theft Auto 3", which I now can't finish, to "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City", which has a lot more missions, including bank robberies and store robberies, so it makes sense for me to get back on the crime beat in movies, too. Those last few missions in GTA 3 notoriously feature several armored cars (called "Securicars" in the game) so this one's very much in line with that.
THE PLOT: The nephew of an armored-truck driver tries to prevent three million dollars from being taken by a local gang during a catastrophic flooding caused by a severe storm.
AFTER: You have to wonder sometimes if form follows function, or if it's the other way around. It's possible that this whole film exists just to establish a framework for a location shoot where three people on jet-skis are chasing each other through a flooded Indiana high school. That feels like somebody had a weird vivid stress dream, and then set out to find a way to put that into a movie. Inspiration is whereever you find it, I guess.
We were watching this week's "Top Chef" last night, and the main cooking challenge was to combine two of the five taste senses in a dish, like sweet & salty, or sour & umami. This film works along the same lines, it's clearly "heist film" mixed with "disaster movie". The disaster is flooding caused by rain, and it's not a bad setting for a heist, because the floods just make everything more difficult, from getting around (cars are useless, causing the need for boats and those jet-skis) to just plain surviving - once the water level reaches the electrical transformers, just being in the water could be deadly in some spots. The simple situation of being locked in a jail cell is dangerous, too, once the police station starts filling up with water, and a couple other times people find themselves in enclosed spaces that force some kind of escape, from handcuffs for example, before they drown.
The complex situations take place in a very simple town. How simple is it? The sheriff played by Randy Quaid is considered the smartest man in town, that should give you an idea. We don't really see the whole town, not very well, anyway, because most of it is under water - other than the high-school, we only get to see the police station, the cemetery and the church, which is undergoing a painstaking restoration, with elaborate stained-glass windows and it sure would be a shame if anything were to happen to them. Thankfully there are no people shooting guns nearby, or riding motorboats down the street a couple stories about ground level. Wait a minute...
There are also constantly shifting alliances between the security guard who's trying to protect the money, the robbers trying to steal it, and the cops who can't quite make up their mind. It turns out that a few million in sealed moneybags is enough to get the sheriff and all his men to forget their obligations to the town and start thinking for themselves, and that's quite a game-changer. It's not quite every man for himself, because that just wouldn't work, but it means that the remains of one faction have to team up with the remains of the other, just so they all have a chance against the cops. As always, it seems like half a loaf is better than none, and the golden rule states that whoever has the gold makes the rules. This is a classic scenario that goes back at least as far as "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre". If you're not crazy about who's currently in possession of the money, just give it a few minutes.
It also answers the question, "Hey, did Betty White and Ed Asner ever appear in the same action movie?" Why, yes, they did, though I don't really know if anyone was actively even asking that question. Morgan Freeman's not really suited for the villain role, though he later did make something similar work as a bank robber in "Going With Style". So, everything at the right time, I guess.
Also starring Christian Slater (last seen in "Very Bad Things"), Morgan Freeman (last heard in "Alpha"), Randy Quaid (last seen in "Paper Moon"), Edward Asner (last heard in "All-Star Superman"), Michael Goorjian (last seen in "The Wizard of Lies"), Dann Florek (last seen in "Sweet Liberty"), Ricky Harris, Mark Rolston (last seen in "Daylight"), Peter Murnik (last seen in "The Paperboy"), Wayne Duvall (last seen in "Love Liza"), Richard Dysart (last seen in "The Thing"), Betty White (last seen in "The Proposal").
RATING: 5 out of 10 Swiss army knife tools
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