Safe Men by Curtis Edmonds -- blueduck@hsbr.org
For some reason, the rising tide of political correctness in Hollywood still has not reached stupid people -- forgive me, the "differently intelligenced". It's still perfectly PC to make fun of the stupid, which is convenient, as their ranks grow daily. Safe Men has no other purpose, no other reason for existing: it is doggedly dedicated to poking fun at its witless characters. There's no one in this movie with the motherwit to think themselves out of a wet paper bag. The problem is, the filmmakers make the assumption that the audience is every bit as stupid as the characters.
The movies starts out promisingly enough. There's a cleverly done cross-cutting scene to open the movie, where we are introduced to inept safecrackers Mitchell and Frank and horribly inept singer/songwriters Samuel and Eddie (Sam Rockwell, Steve Zahn). Samuel and Eddie's act is just indescribably bad. We see them doing their act at a Polish fraternal lodge. They're wearing these outfits on loan from the Museum of Dorkiness, and they're playing some sort of odd technopop that just beggars description. This sounds like it could be funny -- like a last half-hour sketch in a bad Saturday Night Live episode in an off-season -- but instead, the movie audience has the same embarrassed and uncomprehending stare that the elderly Poles have. A conversation after the show reveals that Samuel is a few links short of a kielbasa dinner, and that Eddie is only marginally smarter, if that.
The plot begins when Samuel and Eddie are mistaken for the safecrackers, and are intimidated by the Jewish Mafia into actually robbing safes. Problem is, the Jewish Mafia is led by Big Fat Bernie Gayle (Michael Lerner) and Veal Chop (Paul Giamatti) who are, themselves, a couple of matzo balls short of a Passover dinner. The plot meanders on from here, driven entirely by the stupidity of the characters.
Safe Guys isn't just a movie about dumb people doing dumb things, it's a movie that's been completely dumbed down. The audience is expected to believe, during the course of the movie, that:
-- the appropriate response to a mob death threat is a gift basket full of country jellies -- Samuel and Eddie, who aren't bright enough to crack open a comic book, are somehow able to open safes -- Big Fat Bernie actually believes that Samuel and Eddie can open safes, in spite of obvious and manifest evidence to the contrary -- Samuel and Eddie can't hear the operation of a band saw in the next room, even with a stethoscope held up to the wall, but can hear whispers outside -- Harvey Fierstein would be a good casting choice as a rival Jewish gangster
And, of course, there are other sheerly incredible plot points that I won't reveal here -- all converging in the one central premise that the audience is a bunch of nitwits, the same as the characters.
The movie is odd in other ways as well. It is ostensibly set in the mid-90's, but the clothes and the decor seem to be from a weird 1975-1985 time warp. Add in the Mafia tie-ins, and it's like a Quentin Tarantino movie on Ritalin. The sight gags are numerous and inventive, easily the best part of the movie -- but not enough to make the movie funny by themselves. And the directing by first-timer John Hamburg... well, let's just say that when I (not the most observant person in the world) start noticing things like boom mikes appearing where they shouldn't, there's a problem.
The performances are pretty decent. Lerner isn't really a figure of menace as the mob boss, but he isn't one, really, just someone who spoils his kid rotten. Giamatti has an eye-rolling monologue early on about "Lawrence Nightingale Syndrome", but he's mostly wasted as Lerner's cabana boy. Rockwell is so convincing as an idiot that he strays into Keanu Reeves territory. Zahn might have been convincing had his character been a shade better written -- as it is, he spends the whole movie in a battle of wits with Rockwell's unarmed character.
Safe Men is a low-budget independent movie, so it's probably not nice of me to be knocking it so. However, there are plenty of low-budget movies out there that exhibit good writing and interesting characters without insulting the intelligence of the moviegoer. Go see one of them instead.
Rating: C
-- Curtis Edmonds blueduck@hsbr.org
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