Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Read a lot of Elmore Leonard. Never read this one. With this cast, though, it’s a guarantee I’ll end up seeing this movie at some point. The question now is how good is it, and do I make the extra effort to see it sooner rather than later? Fudgehammer’s got the word:
Aloha Harry,
Just came from a test screening of The Big Bounce, based on the Elmore Leonard novel of the same name. The story revolves around Owen Wilson, who plays a petty thief living in Hawaii. He works construction for evil land developer Gary Sinise, who's married to Bebe Neuwirth, and his head lackey is a beefy Charlie Sheen. Owen gets fired after whacking foreman Vinnie Jones in the head with a baseball bat.
Upon his release from jail, he's given a job as a handyman at the motel owned by Morgan Freeman, who is also a district judge. Freeman plays dominos with his two buddies, Harry Dean Stanton and Willie Nelson. Always attracted to the wrong things in life, Owen becomes smitten with Sinise's sexy young mistress, Sara Foster. She talks Owen into helping her nab $200,000 of Sinise's money that has been set aside for the mob. As with most of Elmore Leonard's works, every character seems to have an angle, and you just know there's some double crossing going on.
Notice I just gave you the actors names, and not their characters. That's all this is, a bunch of talented actors, but no real characters. The whole thing came across as a typical con movie, and I didn't give a damn about any of them.
Owen Wilson is perfect casting for a petty thief/surfer living in Hawaii. I buy that. He's funny in this, but it's typical Owen Wilson, a little low key. Owen is one of the few things I enjoyed in this.
Model turned actress Sara Foster is totally hot, and while we see nothing more than her butt in the nude scenes, she is constantly in bikinis or clingy shirts. She is good in this role, but is a tease and a bitch. As much as I disliked her, I also wanted to let my fingers play Lewis & Clark over her body! She's one of those women you see at the bar on Saturday night. She's hot, she knows she's hot, and she knows that she could take any guy home that she chooses. As much as you look at her thinking, "What a snotty bitch!" You secretly hope you'll be chosen to be her lap dog for the night. Her dad in the film is Kris Kristofferson, but he is only in two scenes that are totally pointless.
I wanted this movie to be a lot of fun, but it's slow, and the plot comes together too quickly at the end in a disjointed kind of way. The "Window Shooter", someone who is driving around Hawaii shooting out windows, is thrown in merely as a sidebar to the scam. It's never clear if this was something incorporated to their scam, or if one of them were doing it as part of the scam. It's unresolved, and the scenes of windows being shot out seemed out of place from the rest of the film. There are some funny moments sprinkled throughout, including a scene with Owen's brother Andrew as a sheriff, but they are few and far between. The movie is very dialogue heavy, with little action to move it along. Sonnenfeld, Tarantino, and Soderbergh really brought life to Elmore's world, but this one is pretty much made for television boring. If you're a die hard Owen Wilson fan, you won't come away totally disappointed, otherwise beware.
Hang loose,
Fudgehammer
Oooooooooooooooooooooooof.
Thanks, Fudgehammer.
"Moriarty" out.
