WHOLE NINE YARDS, THE (director: Jonathan Lynn; screenwriter: Mitchell Kapner; cinematographer: David Franco; editor: Tom Lewis; cast: Bruce Willis (Jimmy Tudeski), Matthew Perry (Oz Oseransky), Rosanna Arquette (Sophie), Michael Clarke Duncan (Frankie Figs), Natasha Henstridge (Cynthia), Amanda Peet (Jill), Kevin Pollak (Janni Gogolak), 2000)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
What can I say about a film that was laugh-out-loud funny in spots, was driven by a fantastic performance by Bruce Willis as a contract killer, but was disturbingly vulgar (the murder of an undercover cop is used as part of the comedy routine), except to say that it was driven by characters who seem to enjoy their work and working with each other. It was also a more palatable of a film than I thought it would be. These demented zany characters, not one of them who was without a blemished soul (reminiscent of Pulp Fiction and Analyze This), is a popular reworking of the gangster film into comedy, a phenomena of recent times worth taking note of in the gangster genre. The result is a film that gets over, more or less, as a parody. A film that is farcical and loopy, but leaves a lot to be desired. It still looks likes like a sitcom to me.
The plot starts off simple and then becomes more complicated as more characters are introduced. Oz Oseransky (Matthew Perry) is a hapless dentist living in Montreal with his harridan French-Canadian wife, Sophie (Rosanna Arquette), whose main asset seems to be her large boobs. She also amusingly struggles with an improbable French-Canadian accent. They have been living together for seven unhappy years, after her father, a dentist whose partner was Oz, embezzled funds and committed suicide, sticking Oz with the debt. She is disappointed that the likable Oz can't make a good living out of his practice. So she hires a hit man, or in this case a hit woman (Oz's new assistant Jill (Amanda), whose role model is Jimmy the Tulip), to whack him to collect on his life-insurance policy. But as coincidence would have it, Jimmy "The Tulip" Tudeski (Willis), a contract killer who killed 17 for a Hungarian crime family in Chicago, the Gogolak Gang, becomes Oz's next-door neighbor, in this middle-class suburban Montreal area. Jimmy got away with just five years in prison after ratting out the gang's leader. He has refused to go into the witness protection program. We first see him confidently grinning, as his stammering neighbor introduces himself. The trembling Oz recognizes who his neighbor is and the two start a friendship which will be tested many times for how strong its loyalty is.
Sophie talks Oz into giving Jimmy's location away to Jimmy's old mob boss, Janni (Kevin Pollak). In return she will grant him a divorce. So off to Chi town goes Oz, but who should meet him in his hotel room, but a mammoth black man, about the size of the Sears Tower, Frankie Figs (Duncan). He tells him he works for Janni and after punching the dentist around offering some more excuses for sight gags and pratfalls, he brings him to see Janni. The conversation from the heavily accented Janni goes something like this, "I yust hate Yimmy. I vill kill the wermin." Oz is then introduced to Jimmy's luscious wife Cynthia (Natasha Henstridge) and is immediately attracted to her. What transpires is a series of double and triple-crosses involving $10 million in cash, with everyone except the dentist wanting someone whacked.
The British born director Jonathan Lynn (My Cousin Vinny), after a so-far mediocre career, has become more skilled at pacing a film, as the non-stop action scenes make the film fly by quickly, which might actually be its best asset. This is lighweight entertainment and should work well if one chooses to overlook a flawed script, questionable values, and that there are no nice people in the film. Don't tell me the dentist is a good guy, there should be no doubt about his character, after he conspires with the contract killer to hide a series of murders! But...the film is funny.
REVIEWED ON 3/11/2000 GRADE: C
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
ozus@sover.net
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DENNIS SCHWARTZ
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews