That Movie Book – Week Thirteen

This week had the theme of “Smash and Grab: how to plan a movie heist”. I went through a phase of watching movie heists when I was younger, and was excited to see that I hadn’t seen any of the suggestions this week. Hell, I am pretty sure I hadn’t even heard of any of them, let alone thought about watching them.

 

Friday involved getting entirely too drunk and commiserating over Sydney losing a soccer game, so for a nice quiet Saturday night I sat down and watched Out Of Sight. Jack Foley (George Clooney), a man who makes a career of robbing banks, tries to escape prison and in doing so encounters Attractive Latino Policewoman (Jennifer Lopez), Karen Sisco. Attractions follow, and while he tried to pull off one last big job, she tries to find him and catch him.

I think because George Clooney was the main lead guy I kept comparing this to the Ocean’s Eleven remake. I think that sadly Out of Sight’s storyline was more believable than that, so I was having this weird mental argument because I liked Ocean’s Eleven more but it’s just so over the top that I kinda wanted to take this film more seriously. But it is still also over the top and silly. I guess that is why it’s the Friday Movie, because it’s pretty easy-going entertainment. I could only pay half attention to it and get the gist of what was going on well enough. But at the same time I kinda just wanted to watch Ocean’s Eleven.

One thing that really stood out more than anything else was Jennifer Lopez and her character.  And it didn’t stand out in a good way.  Jennifer Lopez is not a particularly good actor, and her “Attractive Latino [person]” character is pretty boring seeing as that is all she does in any film she’s in. Throughout the film I kept thinking that the criminals were much more interesting characters, and wished there were more scenes of them in jail, or doing heists or generally just interacting with each other instead of the lovey-dovey sexual tension bullshit between Lopez and Clooney. You guys want to bang, we get it, no one cares. I want to see Don Cheadle act like a tough guy and not have an awful cockney accent, dammit. I don’t want to see your stupid Jennifer Lopez Face. Get off my screen. The fact that everyone else in the movie were more interesting and better actors really hammered home how boring and bland Jennifer Lopez was. I think that really let the film down, even a pulpy trashy movie like this.

 

On Sunday we chucked Bonnie and Clyde on, thinking we should watch it seeing it’s a classic or whatever. We got maybe ten minutes in before turning it off. We didn’t even make it to any sort of real bank robbery type scene. We just got sick of “oh I am attractive. And SO LONELY.” and “I am dangerous, look how dangerous I am. DANGER.” It was full of over acting and was pretty boring on top of that, so we skipped it. Maybe some other time when we’re more accommodating of old movies.

 

We moved swiftly on to Dog Day Afternoon. Al Pacino is a Vietnam Veteran turned luckless bank robber; his sidekick is a bit of an idiot, the bank has hardly and money in it, his hostages aren’t scared of him, and soon the bank is surrounded by hundreds of policemen. Nothing’s going his way.

This was a slow burner of a film. There wasn’t really that much of a classic film progression in this one; the film starts right at the bank robbery, with very little lead up, so the viewer is kinda thrown in to the action (or lack there of) and left to try and work out what’s going on yourself. I didn’t want to watch this at the beginning; it was too slow and I wasn’t really in the mood for this kind of film so it just felt boring and I wanted to turn it off and watch something easier instead.

But then it got interesting. Al Pacino’s character, Sonny, got intriguing, and his motivations got deeper than “I need some money”. While it still never really fully grabbed me, I did start paying more attention to what was going on and wondering what was going to happen. Al Pacino was also really good in this. You start to feel for his character after a while and when things just keep going wrong for him you get more sympathetic. The whole scenario seemed to drag on and unravel more as it went along that it got a bit frustrating towards the end, but that seemed to add to it all. Apparently it was based on a true story about a botched robbery in New York and the impending hostage situation, and the dragging out of the film feels like it echoes the tension that would have occurred at that time. I can understand why Marc Fennel said it should have won more Oscars than it did.

This was definitely a thinking movie, but we weren’t really in the mood for a thinking movie. I feel a bit bad that I didn’t really appreciate it because I wanted something more like Out of Sight, but I still enjoyed it to a degree. Maybe we’ll watch it again some other time when we’re ready to think.

 

The other suggestions this week included Heat (Criminal leading lots of heists is feeling bored of it all; Cop chasing him down feeling the same way. ) and Rififi (French dude fresh out of prison for stealing jewellery organises the Biggest French Jewel Heist). I feel like maybe Rififi would have been a better choice than Bonnie and Clyde, but after a week of French cinema last week I didn’t really want to watch mroe films with subtitles. I do think it was our loss though, it sounds really good. Next week we’re visiting Ben’s parents, but will still be sitting down to watch our Wizarding movies for the theme. Who knows, maybe his parents will give their opinions as well?