BEFORE: Posting late AGAIN because I pulled another Sunday night shift at the theater - I didn't lock up until close to midnight, and my subway line was shut down in Manhattan, so I couldn't come straight home. Instead I had to take a different train further into Queens, and transfer at an outdoor station for an L train heading back towards Manhattan, which would only have been a problem if it were freezing cold outside, which it was. I didn't get home until 1:30 am, which meant feeding the cats late, starting my Sunday movie late, and staying up much too late to have any chance of getting up on time Monday morning. Well, these are the tough shifts, for sure, but I need the management to know they can count on me to work the long hours and also properly lock up the theater, no matter how late the event runs. I'm assuming this will all be helpful to my career someday, even if I'm not exactly sure how.
Fred Melamed carries over from "Dragged Across Concrete".
THE PLOT: Ivan steals art for the Greek. He wants to get out but can he? He meets an actress at two of his "jobs" and she has her own problems but helps him.
AFTER: Well, this was a cute little film about art theft, and also finding love in a hopeless place, namely Los Angeles. Elyse is an up-and-coming actress who's managed to catch the eye of some influential people in Hollywood who all want to take advantage of her, and this includes a producer that she stole some jewelry from, only to find that it was borrowed for an awards event, and when it wasn't returned, he charged her for the item's value, so she's been working off her debt one bad Russian film at a time. She keeps bumping into Ivan at parties, and eventually she figures out that he's not there for the drinks or the conversation, because every time she sees him, a piece of valuable art gets stolen from the venue.
Ivan's in a similar situation, except he's stealing art to work off his late father's gambling debts, by working for The Greek, a real-estate dealer who's really into procuring art for his clients, and Ivan's the best at it, when he's not distracted by the shenanigans of his brother, who's been dealing drugs at a halfway house and has been asked to leave the premises because he's a bad influence. So Ivan lets Ray live with him for a while, until he can get a place of his own or can get clean, and neither one seems very likely.
Ivan wants to know how many more jobs he has to pull for the Greek, because he figures that he should have made a dent in that debt by now, only the Greek keeps refusing to tally things up, however he knows he can only string Ivan along for so long, so he offers him a deal, if he can steal the only known self-portrait of Hitler known to exist, and then do one more small job, he can square the debt and walk away. Only come on, why would the Greek let his most productive thief off the hook? So Ivan figures that sooner or later, he'll have to kill the Greek, that's really the only way he'll ever be free again.
Meanwhile, a low-level FBI agent keeps hearing about these major art thefts, and starts to put two and two together, realizing they were all pulled off by the same guy, even though the M.O. was different every time. But he realizes that he can either flip Ivan to catch the Greek, or better yet, get a piece of the action for himself, because the art theft market is very profitable. It's possible that some of these people could help each other out of their desperate situations, like Ivan pretends to be Elyse's boyfriend to keep a sleazy ex away from her, and Elyse pretends to be Ivan's girlfriend so he can case an art dealer's home in Costa Mesa that's for sale, pretending to be in the market for a house, umm, I think. But then it seems just as likely that everyone is using everyone else to get ahead, which means that really, it's every man (and woman) for themselves.
It's very slick to make the art thief the victim here, that way we don't feel guilty when we enjoy watching him steal the art in innovative ways. The opening sequence where he steals a Koons silver rabbit statue (designed to resemble a balloon) by replacing it with an ACTUAL silver balloon in the same shape, is quite ingenious. Really, if you think about it, it's a similar opening sequence to "Raiders of the Lost Ark", where Indy replaces that golden idol with a bag of sand with the similar weight. You just have to imagine that this Hollywood party is the secret, trap-laden underground temple and the silver rabbit statue is the golden idol, and then I guess Belloq is a large, Greek art dealer. But really, same idea, the old switcheroo, and if you're going to steal some plot points, you might as well steal from the best. Anyway, maybe this whole film is stolen from "The Thomas Crown Affair", who's to say?
Once again, it's a movie that absolutely nobody saw, it grossed just $600,000 in theaters, and that was in 2019, pre-pandemic so there's no excuse, really. Nobody saw "Dragged Across Concrete" either, it also took in around $600,000 the year before, 2018. So much fail, really, but I enjoyed both movies, yesterday's a bit more than today's. Maybe I'm being too nice.
Also starring Theo James (last seen in "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger"), Emily Ratajkowski (last seen in "Fyre"), Ebon Moss-Bachrach (last seen in "Tesla"), Isiah Whitlock Jr. (last seen in "Pieces of April"), Evan Handler (last seen in "Too Big to Fail"), Paul Jurewicz (last seen in "A Simple Favor"), Keith Powell, John Gatins (last seen in "The Nines"), Joe Bucaro III (last seen in "The Replacement Killers"), Julia Haart, Fernanda Andrade, Orion McCabe (last seen in "The Bling Ring"), Mia Cheung, Eileen O'Connell, Eddie Martinez (last seen in "The Gambler"), Sean Patrick Thomas, Robert Peters (last seen in "Stillwater"), Ivo Nandi (last seen in "A Cure for Wellness"), Adam Nagata, Taji Coleman, Bob Stephenson (last seen in "Top Gun: Maverick"), Beka Sikharulidze, Davie-Blue (last seen in "Manson Family Vacation"), Frank Clem, Ray Stoney, Lex Medlin, Sam Kazanski, Rod Chaouqi.
RATING: 6 out of 10 poker chips with chewing gum on them
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