Mos Def, John Hawkes and kidnap victim Jennifer Aniston
“LIFE OF CRIME” My rating: C+ (Now showing at the Cinetopia)
98 minutes | MPAA rating: R
Movie chemistry is a weird thing.
Sometimes you can have a lot going for you — terrific performances, a literary pedigree — and yet the damn souffle won’t rise.
Such is the fate of “Life of Crime,” an adaptation of the Elmore Leonard novel The Switch and set in his familiar world of bumbling crooks and unlikely heroes.
Written and directed by Daniel Schechter, whose credits include the little-seen “Goodbye, Baby” and “Supporting Characters,” the film has a plot that might be a variation on O. Henry’s “The Ransom of Red Chief,” that classic short story about kidnappers who discover the rich brat they’ve snatched is more than they can handle. (It might also remind you of “Ruthless People,” the 1986 Bette Midler comedy about a kidnapping.)
Low-level Detroit crooks Ordelle (Mos Def, performing under his real name of Yaslin Bey) and Louie (the ever-excellent John Hawkes) cook up a scheme to snatch Mickey (Jennifer Aniston), the wife of local crooked businessman Frank Dawson (Tim Robbins). They will hold her in the home of a third accomplice, a Nazi-worshipping head case (Mark Boone Junior).
What nobody counts on is that Frank is having an affair with a scheming younger woman, Melanie (Isla Fisher), and has no reason to cough up a $1 million ransom for the return of the wife he was already planning on trading in.
Typical of a Leonard yarn, “Life of Crime” is a mix of both humor and suspense. We’ve seen this formula work wonderfully in movies like “Get Chili” and “Out of Sight”, but something goes wrong here. It’s not that Schechter’s movie lacks either humor or suspense, but rather that the proportions seem out of whack. The best Leonard adaptations are actually funnier than the books they are based on. One is likely to respond to a Leonard book more with a wry grimace than with an outright belly laugh, and that’s the style Schechter adapts.
Butler's Cinema Scene 