Un plan d'enfer

The only reason I watched this is because my girlfriend threatened me to. This is movie is sooo desperate to be a post modern crime thriller that it looks and feels so relentlessly superficial.

Most scenes are decked out in unpleasant pastel colors and interiors are always lit with warm lights. It's nice to look at but has a student filmmaking feel to it that distracts me.

Something else that is quite unreal is the scene in which Nivola and Witherspoon discuss their forthcoming crime...on a roof in front of a neon sign on a sofa. Yeah...like people keep sofas on roofs in front of neon signs. This was obviously an attempt by the director to add a little sparkle to an otherwise BORING scene. Which is also the reason he throws in some cliched camera angles. It's a "film noir" you see...so diagonal shots on an ordinary scene are standard.

Composer Craig Armstrong was obviously hired at the last minute when the director heard the score for Romeo and Juliet to provide a superficial (that word again) soundtrack. It sounds like it belongs in a totally different movie. But perhaps this is a good thing. There isn't much theme but the music does evoke some weird feelings from us. Much like the feelings the characters have. It's cool and I wish more scores were this way.

The "twist" wasn't too obvious to me. Once it occurs it takes away all the tension and stress right away and will relieve you big time. It even manages to change the tone of the whole movie to light-hearted.

In case your wondering my girlfriend lists this as number 2 in her top 3 movies. Number 1 is Devils Advocate and 3 is Moonwalker...ugh!

"Best Laid Plans" has invited a lot of comparisons with "The Usual Suspects", but with its caper-plan-gone-awry storyline it reminded me more of "Palmetto" - except that it's not as good as either of those films. The whole set-up is rather laborious, and the payoff, while clever, doesn't really amount to much. Ultimately, this is a very unexceptional movie; you can easily find many of its equivalents in the "crime" section of your local video store. What makes it worth your time are the performances; Nivola, in particular, has an engagingly laid-back presence and Reese Witherspoon is good as usual. (**1/2)

This was a pleasant surprise. I really didn't know what to expect, but what I got was a very intelligent movie with more than enough twists and turns to keep things rather unpredictable. It took a little too long to get everything set up properly, and it perhaps had one twist too many, but overall, it was a great film with strong performances by Alessandro Nivola and Reese Witherspoon. Definitely worth checking out.

Having met his old buddy Bryce for the first time in years for a drink, Nick gets a call from him in the middle of night asking for help. He goes to Bryce's place where he gets told that Bryce pulled a girl that night, took her home, started messing around and then had sex. However immediately after sex the girl says that she is going to the police to tell them that she was raped. Bryce then takes Nick downstairs where he has the girl tied to a billiard table to prevent her leaving. The two men try to work out what they are going to do, but are things what they seem?

Opening with an interesting set-up, this film jumps back in time and immediately undoes itself with a plot that is interesting but not as good as it really should have been. The plot follows the fall of Nick as he needs more money to cover firstly the dreams he has and then the problems he gets into when he tries to get the money by crime. Essentially this film could have been a mix of Tarantino, Mamet and Usual Suspects twists but it falls short of any of those targets but still manages to produce a reasonably good drama with elements of each. The plot isn't as good once it jumps back four months although it still has enough movement to keep things going. The twists are not that great and the plot itself doesn't make as much logical sense as it would like to think that it does. Nor is it as clever as it would like to think – the small town America was well painted but the work on the characters was not as good.

Nivola leads the cast well with a nice performance of subtlety even if the material isn't always there for him. Witherspoon walks the film rather easily with a simple role that only really gets interesting towards the end. Of the rest of the cast Brolin is OK, Howard makes a solid appearance and generally everyone else turns in solid performances. It was a film that I felt the characters could have been more important and better developed but they were still good enough for the cast to work with.

Overall this is a fairly typical thriller with a twist. It seems to want to be a bit like Tarantino with the dialogue edge of Mamet and the twists of things like Suspects but it doesn't really get close to any of them. Still, it produces an engaging thriller that, although not original, is distracting at least.

Long live Mike Barker! This fairly fresh feature director has pulled off one of those rare tributes to the film noir scene, which once coloured the movie scene in the past. There have been worthy efforts, but this one seems to have it all right. The movie starts as most movies from Mike Barker start. Circumstances found as in the traditions of working class realism found in the films of Ken Loach and the novels of Alan Silitoe, colour the first couple of scenes. The story starts with a scene in which is explained that Bryce (Josh Brolin) has 'accidentally' raped a minor. He calls his old university buddy friend Nick (Nivola) to help him out. At this moment the story rewinds to 4 months earlier and we can peak in the history to see how this problem started. Nick has just lost his father, found out he doesn't get any money, and works at a recycling plant. He than engages in some criminal activities, which turns horribly sour and he ends up owing 15,000 dollars to a local criminal. Now, that's all you need to know about the storyline, there are so many plots and twists that even the most critical movie fan would be impressed by the surprises that are being thrown at you. The last time I experienced such a feast, was during the Usual Suspects, and that is quite a compliment.

Reese Witherspoon (Lissa, nick's girlfriend and the 'raped' minor) pulls off one of her more impressing acting roles since 'Freeway' Although a bit more constraint than her role in Freeway, her presence definitely enriches the movie. Allessandro Nivola (Nick) will await a big future. His nonchalance acting and worried looks, will make him the perfect actor for sub-blockbusters. Finally one of his bigger roles after movies such as Inventing the Abbotts and Face/Off. Josh Brolin is less appealing, but even he is not bad enough to ruin this movie.

Mike Barker continues his strong line of work, after The James Gang in '97. And in a sort of way, this movie resembles his previous to some aspect. In both movies poor families take center stage, and in both movies they are resulting in criminal activities because of the financial trouble they are in. Barker is definitely one of the most artistic directors around (up there with Scorsese), but one wonders if he doesn't overdue it a bit sometimes. Even these minor negative things can't make me change my mind that this is a great movie, cinematic wise, with a well written script, that the characters are well thought out and acted, and that Barker has proven himself once more that he is a major talent. Bravo!