Spanish Judges

The stranger Jack (Matthew Lillard) arrives in the studio of the crook collector of antiques Max (Vincent D'Onofrio) and tells his ambitious companion and specialist in poisons Jamie (Valeria Golino) that he is Jack's brother. Jamie does not buy his story, dominates Jack and ties him up to a chair. When Max arrives, Jack proposes US$ 100,000.00 for each one to protect him in a negotiation of the antiques "Spanish Judges" with a wealthy and dangerous collector. Max invites his stupid acquaintance Piece (Mark Boone Junior), who comes with his retarded girlfriend that believes she is from Mars, to compose the backup team. However, Jack double-crosses the collector and then he intrigues Jack, Jamie and Piece.

The low budget "Spanish Judges" is a movie with a reasonable screenplay with an awful conclusion that wastes a good cast. Valeria Golino is astonishingly beautiful but together with the good actor Vincent D'Onofrio, they are not able to save the stupid story. Further, the scenes that are supposed to be funny unfortunately do not work, and actually they are silly and not funny. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): "Tudo Por Dinheiro" ("All For Money")

Two aspects of this movie had the chance to make it a good flick, the psychos in the gang, and the plot twists, mostly betrayals. But it gets bogged down in a lot of banter, and the pace gets too slow, not as slow as "High Art", but close. There is also a little too much over-acting, sort of like a high school play. The beginning sets things up fairly well, and the ending has all the plot twists, but you have to bear with the middle scenes. The psychos were well thought out, but not well executed, rather shallowly done. Better caper/heist flicks to rent would be Phoenix, Route 9, or Judas Kiss, and a better psycho movie would be In Dreams, but it might be worth a couple bucks if you don't get your hopes up too high. -Bob

Lillard's performance was similar to that in "The Curve". Which is also a really good movie if you like plot twists. D'Onofrio gave a perfect performance and Mars Girl is the cutest comic relief. Bottom line. I was very happy with the movie. I was excited up until the end when it took a very ...different turn, even then, I want to see it again. I am curious to see what extras, behind-the-scenes kinda stuff they have on the DVD. Anyways, 2 hours alone in the dark with Lillard and D'Onofrio is never a waste of time.

I really like Vincent Donofrio, but his movie choices are uniformly bad. The only decent things he's ever been in are Full Metal Jacket and Law And Order - Criminal Intent.

This movie starts off slow and then slumps off from there. Ridiculous characters, implausible behavior, clichéd performances, stupid story. It's all there, all the problems any film can have, all in one place. They should use this as a teaching tool in Film School: coursename = 'How Not To Make a Movie' , and a companion course: 'How To Ruin The Careers Of Actors Who May Actually Have Some Talent'.

Don't waste your time, life is too short and each hour is precious...

Wow, I can't believe i'm the first and only one to post a comment on this great movie.

Although the movie itself seemed interesting enough the real thing that attracted me to this one is Matt lillard, granted most people probably either think he's too caffeine happy or just plain sucks but we're both the same age and from the same generation and i've watched this guy so many times that he's one of my favorites now. This is one of the few movies where he is the big shot and main star kind of like in SLC Punk, another great Lillard film.

Baiscally this is storywise your usual heist movies but with more twists than anything, which start to amount to craziness. Also very notable in this movie is another great actor named vincent D'onofrio, a very under appreciated person in the film industry. The woman in the movie is a newcomer and she isn't too bad although you know they hired her mainly for her accent and the nude scene =)

It's a game of jack vs jill vs bob as each want to reap the rewards but share with no one. They all try to get eachother to kill off the other and it's a timebomb waiting to explode. Matt shows his true prowess as the scheming JAck who initially starts the whole scheme. Vincent and woman play a couple of art thieves who are in need of money due to a lack of business. Vince's character is a bit deranged and skitz's throughout the movie but that only add to the intensity of the film.

The surprises left and right are well welcomed and the ending is very non cliche and makes you feel happy, well maybe that depends on the type of endings you like. This movie kept me very interested besides the fact Matt was in it, it's a great movie and i'd highly recommend it to anyone who likes movies. Critic's probably won't like this movie, but they don't watch movies cause they like movies anyway.