Did anyone see this film besides me? I mean there are two other reviews on the site, but looking at the IMDB entry, it only made $226,792 in 3 weeks, and only played in 175 screens. I thought it was fairly well advertised, opened moderately well with some major competition, but it did have a popular actress in the lead and guns and pretty woman in tight dresses for the commercials. Why did this film not even make a ¼ of a million dollars? How come not a single one of my regular reviewers saw the film? It wasn’t that bad, but I do find it hard to recommend.

The story isn’t really that original, but a lot of the details within the story are. These two women overhear a bank robbery being performed on a boyfriend’s phone scanning device. They try to tell the police, who won’t listen. The next day they hear that the bank has been robbed, and realize that they have one of the thieves’ cell phone numbers. They decide to call him up and try to extort money from him. The reason for this is a little weak, but basically the two actresses decide to commit the crime because they are poor, and the thieves were wrong to initially steal it. When one balks later on, the other convinces her that they could donate a large supply of the money to a hospital to buy needed equipment.

They proceed with trying to blackmail criminals, and things go badly when they are set up, and a homeless man is shot by the robbers thinking he is the extortionist. Later, one of the robbers is shot because another robber thinks his sloppiness is what caused the whole mess. The police are trying to catch the thieves but suspect that two woman who tried to report the crime are a big lead. They keep coming very close to the women without realizing it. The thieves on the other hand are fairly dangerous men who have no intention of being extorted by small time extortionists. They intend to find and kill these potential blackmailers. The women almost get the money a few times, but also almost end up hurt or dead. If this sounds light, it is, even though the movie actually ends in a shoot out with automatic weapons.

There is quite a bit of action in the film. We get shoot outs, some minor car chases, an explosion or two, and even a threatened poisoning. However, I never really felt like the two leads were in any sort of danger.

This movie never does seem to find the right note that it wants to play. At least I don’t think it does. If it did, it is a very strange note, indeed. I’m sure it wants to be a comedy, and somewhat lighthearted, but some of plot devices involves some pretty serious stuff. It is hard to have a comedy when people are hurt or killed. It is hard to worry about the lead characters when the movie is trying so hard to be funny and sweet. “Fargo” is one of the few examples of a movie that successfully walks the fence between the two. This film keeps falling over onto one side of the fence or the other.

The acting is also very good. Minnie Driver hasn’t really given a bad performance yet, and here her character starts off mousy, has to act tough, and a few shades in between. She does them all well playing a British nurse. Mary McCormack had a great debut for me back on the TV show “Murder One”. She left the show to do the Howard Stern movie “Private Parts”. I don’t want to fault her too much for that, because she was pretty good in it, but I have noticed she hasn’t been offered too many great roles since then. Here she also has to go through a range, although it is the much smaller one between ‘tough girl’ and ‘even tougher girl’. She also shows us that she has a knack for doing voices and impressions. She’s pretty good, especially at the beginning when we see her apparently doing cartoon voices during the day and ‘performance’ theater at night. She plays a struggling American actress trying to find success in Britain. Maybe this is what she is really doing in real life?

The direction is actually quite good, and there are numerous scenes that are very well done with some sort of tricky camera angle or edit. The director even manages to use some of the more blatant effects like split-screen, which often can have the negative effect of reminding you that you are watching a movie. The movie never drew me in enough for these effects to really spoil anything for me, so instead I could appreciate them a bit more.

Like the rest of the movie, the ending tries to please all of the crowds. The money is donated to buy large quantities of medical equipment for the hospital Minnie is a nurse at, but yet these ladies have kept a large amount so that they can buy a convertible Mercedes and still have a purse full of spending money.

This isn’t a particularly bad film, but I don’t think it will stick in your head for very long. The movie just kind of rides along just above being ‘average’ or ‘OK’ the whole time. There aren’t any big laughs, big scares, or great revelations. Still, I was never bored during the film.

Note: As another unusual side note, as seems the case with so many English movies these days, the lead woman are never naked, yet we get to see some of the male lead’s naked butts. If this were an American film, you probably would’ve had the woman discussing their plans topless in a steam room somewhere, and none of the humorous homosexual elements would have been anywhere to be found.



Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older