‘It is what it is…‘
You know when someone whose opinion you greatly admire recommends something to you, and you go into that thing dearly wanting to love it too. But then your heart sinks as you’re halfway through and you realise it’s not going to live up to expectations. Unfortunately, this was one of those films for me…
Jimmy the Saint (Andy Garcia) assembles a five man gang to carry out a seemingly risk free muscle job. When things go badly wrong, the men start to be picked off one by one.
This should be a good film. A ’90s crime flick with a cast including Christopher Walken, Steve Buscemi and Christopher Lloyd, flanked by the aforementioned Garcia and veteran Jack Warden should be a winner. When the movie began with a Tom Waits song, I was sure I was onto something great. And the first 40 minutes are pretty good. Walken is charming and menacing in equal measure as the wheelchair bound crime lord, and the scenes in which Garcia is assembling his crew represent the high point of the movie. After the job is botched however, Things to Do… never recovers.
It’s fine to wear your influences on your sleeve. Heck, nothing is original. But this flick is so clearly an attempt to ape the huge success of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, that at times it becomes groan inducing. This is what happens when studio execs see a successful film and say “I want that”. This is reheated ideas, stripped of any heart and soul and served up in a smart suit with half baked one liners. The cast do their best, Walken and Garcia share an electric chemistry at times despite Chris Walken’s outrageous hair piece, but director Gary Fleder gives them nothing to work with. Screenwriter Scott Rosenborg, who would somehow go on to write both the brilliant High Fidelity and the excretable Kangaroo Jack, gets mired in convoluted plot points and gangster cliche.
This appears to be a film that divides opinion. It bombed at the box office and was trashed by critics, but I know a fair few people that speak highly of it. I just couldn’t see it. Strike this from your list of Things to Do in Your House When You’re Bored.