Daniel Schechter (2013)

Like Jackie Brown, this is a character-driven crime caper based on a novel by Elmore Leonard.  Unlike Jackie Brown, Quentin Tarantino didn’t write the screenplay or direct and Life of Crime could use some of his electricity and wit.  The film isn’t bad but it’s lacklustre and, since the two criminals who kidnap a rich man’s wife and set a hefty ransom for her release are the most engaging characters from the start, the reversals in the story don’t have much impact.  The plot is somewhat reminiscent of the more decisively comedic Ruthless People (1986):  the scumbag chauvinist Frank Dawson (Tim Robbins), whose wealth is thanks to his own life of crime in the form of dodgy business deals, would be more than happy for his wife Mickey (Jennifer Aniston) to disappear without trace so that he can settle down with his younger mistress Melanie (Isla Fisher).  Once Mickey learns she’s going to be released – the kidnappers Louis (John Hawkes) and Ordell (Yasiin Bey, aka Mos Def) mistakenly think the ransom has been paid – she realises she doesn’t want to go home.  Once she gets home, she realises she hates Frank, who’s filed for divorce, enough to go into partnership with Louis and Ordell.  The film, set in Detroit in 1978 (with plenty of agreeable pop song reminders of the year on the soundtrack), ends with this pair, abetted by Mickey, taking Melanie prisoner in the hope that Frank will be keener to pay to get her back.  (The Elmore Leonard novel is called The Switch.)

Jennifer Aniston is good in the pre-kidnap scenes as the fretful, frustrated trophy wife, watching her husband ooze vilely at a golf club dinner and their teenage son throw a strop when he loses a tennis match.  Aniston doesn’t bring Mickey’s transformation to life but, if she did, the film’s denouement might be even more obvious.  All the main actors do decent work – especially John Hawkes, who makes Louis both seedy and sensitive, and Will Forte, as Marshall, Mickey’s infinitely spineless would-be suitor – but Daniel Schechter’s direction is pedestrian.  There are two problems with minor characters.  Richard (Mark Boone Jr), with whom Louis and Ordell work in tetchy partnership, is a Nazi fanatic.  A plaque on the wall of his scuzzy home proclaims there’s ‘nothing lower in this world than jews [sic] and niggers, except the police who protect them’.  It’s hard to make this character amusing, even in a black comedy, even when one of his partners in crime is African-American, and even though Richard is eventually killed by a police bullet.  Daniel Schechter relies on Mark Boone Jr’s repulsive obesity to make the man comically ridiculous, which merely adds to the unease.  Frank and Mickey’s teenage son Bo is well played by Charlie Tahan.  Bo is convincingly unhappy but is then virtually dropped from the story.  What are we supposed to think its outcome holds for him?

7 September 2014