Country: USA
Movie Review: The third feature film from Daniel Schechter (“Supporting Characters”), “Life of Crime”, was adapted from Elmore Leonard’s novel “The Switch”, and despite having nothing really new to offer, it entertains most of the time. Everything starts when two well-informed swindlers, Louis (John Hawkes) and Ordell (Mos Def), target Mickey Dawson (Jennifer Aniston), the wife of a wealthy man, kidnapping her in order to ask for a million dollars ransom. While the operation occurs, Frank Dawson (Tim Robbins), the selfish husband, is in Bahamas with his lover Melanie (Isla Fisher) who thwarts the plan by picking up all the phone calls and saying that Frank is not there with her. Meanwhile, Mickey is made hostage and placed in the house of a stinky Nazi follower called Richard (Mark Boone Junior). The story gets really messy as it moves forward, and some characters change positions driven by a determination for revenge, or even fear, as it occurred to Marshall (Will Forte), a friend of the Dawson family who has a crush on Mickey and was caught in the middle of the kidnapping scene. Schechter’s direction was minimally competent without standing out, leading “Life of Crime” to lose some energy and control in its final part. A few ludicrous moments, regular pace, and a cool atmosphere, so characteristic of the majority of the heist movies, makes us distracted from the usual aspects that hamper the films of this genre from being totally gratifying. They’re there, but the performances made me tolerate them.
