Alta Incompetência

The film is a very funny parody of classic heist movies. Whatever can go wrong will go wrong. There is a lot of humour coming from the differences between the rather goofy characters but also a lot of slapstick which I like. The cast shines. Sutherland gives a great performance of a character who is not quite as cool as he thinks he is. Jack Warden plays the grumpy pawn shop owner. The end is bitter sweet when Warden's character realizes that the only friends he has are the ones who wanted to rob him. I think it's a genuinely funny comedic jewel. I don't really get all the dislike for it. It is not Citizen Kane but as a comedy it works.

Louis Malle is best known as one of the doyens of the French New Wave. After directing a number of movies in his native country, he came to the US and gave us "Atlantic City" and "My Dinner with Andre". One of his lesser known movies is 1984's "Crackers", about a group of down-and-out people plotting a heist. This is not at all the sort of movie that I'd expect from Malle, especially having seen "Au revour, les enfants" (set in Nazi-occupied France).

Anyway, it's an okay comedy; only a handful of scenes are laugh-out-loud funny. Donald Sutherland, Sean Penn, Wallace Shawn,* Jack Warden, Trinidad Silva, and Christine Baranski put on fine performances (not that I'd expect otherwise). That cast turns it into a link between the Hunger Games franchise, "Dead Man Walking", the Toy Story Franchise, a number of Woody Allen movies, "UHF" and "The Good Fight". Co-star Larry Riley died of AIDS resulting from promiscuity, while co-star Charmaine Woodard played Samuel L. Jackson's character's mom in "Glass".

*My parents met Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory when "My Dinner with Andre" got released. The four of them met in a restaurant and had a philosophical conversation about the movie.

While most sane adults will find this movie pointless and without any merits,I still would like to point out a great deal of movies released to this day are far more repugnant...This movie features Sean Penn in his pre-Madonna youth,and Sutherland in his prime.OK,I admit that as a 10 year old boy,I fondly recall watching this movie over and over and over again on HBO....I suppose dozens of screenings,along with a nostalgia for one's childhood memories can make even Ishtar great..Nevertheless,the final 30 minutes are quite entertaining,with a pretty good ending.The love stories can drag out in this type of movie,and do.

"Crackers" has to be one of the coolest and unusual films on Louis Malle extensive career, which goes from "Elevator to the Gallows" to "Vanya on 42th Street" with masterpieces such as "Goodbye Children" and "Atlantic City". Here, he tells the story of a group of misfits who work or spend some time to score some money on a pawnshop led by greedy Garvey (Jack Warden). They are poor and desperatly broke trying to do weird jobs or just going from scheme to scheme until the wisest of them all Weslake (Donald Sutherland) invites to break into the safety vault from the place when Garvey's out visiting his mom. They are played by Sean Penn, Larry Riley, Trinidad Silva and Wallace Shawn and they all play in a cool fashion as this bunch of low-life characters who might finally find their place in the sun with lots of money or whatever is in the safe.

Some people see the movie as a social commentary on America's economical situation with this group of odd men trying to make it big with the score of the century, where the poor take advantage of the wealthy one. I don't go that far because the movie plays it simple and safe as an adventure comedy, without making any political statements. It's just humor of the best quality. Those guys have limited imagination, pros and cons but somehow they make it like regular joes of whom we feel empathy and we like them in the way they are. Wheter Sutherland plays the smart lead, Penn plays the charming dude who wants to date Ramon's sister; and Shawn doesn't talk much but only keeps thinking on how to score some free food, they're all interesting and cool to see how they conduct things until the highly expected robbery (which is hilarious, when they met several challenges on the way.

I loved their routines, the movie takes its time to develop and we have the opportunity to get to know all of them and other characters as well (like the police officer Maxine, funny role for Christine Baranski), to live with them in that small town where they keep bumping on each other in several ways. "Crackers" has a fine sense of humor and goes as a near perfect comedy, a terrain Mr. Malle hardly ever explored. It was a different experience for him, who at first thought he was the wrong man for the job but in the end he came to enjoy the experience. It's an enjoyable movie and one that entertains a lot, undeserving of its low ratings and low audience viewers. Criminally underrated.

And it's another case of a movie that is so good, with many great characters that I could imagine it as being a TV series. I'd certainly watch that. 9/10.

"Crackers" falls into that category of films that have failed quite inexplicably - helmed by a great director, starring a cast of assured veterans (Sutherland, Warden) and talented newcomers (Penn, Baranksi) and written by the screenwriter of one of the best films of the eighties ("Cutter's Way"). Then why is it that no one talks about the film anymore? Firstly, the film has been made far more successfully on two other occasions in the guise of "Big Deal on Madonna Street" and then recently "Welcome To Collinwood". Secondly, Malle must have been going through an eighties dance music phase when he made the film because it is effectively ruined by an utterly dated and abysmal soundtrack - with a proper film score it would have been a far better film. Lastly, Sutherland gives what is probably his most broad and embarrassingly unfunny performance in the lead, subsequently hindering any sympathy for his character. There are other qualms (what exactly is the purpose of Baranski's character, lets throw in a slut for some wacky comedy?) but it is nevertheless still quite watchable. Shawn, who would collaborate with Malle on the acclaimed films "My Dinner With Andre" and "Vanya on 42nd Street", is very funny as the forever-eating Turtle and Penn is amusing in a dumb hood role he would practically resume for "We're No Angels", another film with a great director, writer and cast that would be a critical and commercial failure. No film made by Malle could be truly bad, and this isn't, but it is neither as quirky or funny as it wants to be.