Scorched | ||||||
The film opens on Monday morning when a naive nice guy (Thomas) arrives at the bank to start his new job, only to find the place in chaos after the weekend robberies. We then jump back and follow the increasingly nutty series of events in a sunny and loud filmmaking style that thinks it's much more hip and cool than it is. The script isn't that bad, and in the hands of a good director this could have been a lively heist comedy. But this leaden mess never gets off the ground; the superb cast is encouraged to play it broadly, without subtext or character detail, and it's photographed and edited with no finesse at all. It feels completely pointless, despite some entertaining sequences and gifted performers. Every chance to make something intriguing out of the characters is wasted (the worst is Cook's Xena wannabe, who could be cut out entirely); while the film is watchable, not a single plot thread comes to life. We may laugh a few times and marvel at how the filmmakers juggle the storylines, but without even a whiff of originality we're left utterly cold at the end. Sigh.
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dir Gavin Grazer scr Joe Wein with Alicia Silverstone, Woody Harrelson, Paulo Costanzo, John Cleese, David Krumholtz, Marcus Thomas, Joshua Leonard, Ivan Sergei, Rachael Leigh Cook, Jeffrey Tambor, Al Corley, Max Wein release US 25.Jul.03; UK 9.Dec.05 Winchester 02/US 1h34 Counting the cash: Costanzo, Harrelson and Silverstone.
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