The best thing about “Life of Crime” is the cast, a lively combination of character types, scene-stealers, and one slumming superstar. And yet the movie feels like a community-theater walk-through.
Despite the tentpole presence of Jennifer Aniston and its roots as an Elmore Leonard adaptation (it shares characters with Leonard’s “Rum Punch,” which Quentin Tarantino shot as “Jackie Brown”), “Life of Crime” is dialed-down and low-rent, lacking the bravado that might boost it up a notch or two.
Aniston plays Mickey, weary trophy wife to Detroit bigwig Frank Dawson (Tim Robbins plays the role with greasy bonhomie and a Donald Trump haircut). Petty criminals Ordell Robbie (Yasiin Bey, who used to be called Mos Def) and Louis Gara (John Hawkes, late of “The Sessions”) conspire to kidnap Mickey and collect a cool million off the secret stash Frank’s been skimming from his real-estate chicanery.
Ordell and Louis were incarnated by Samuel L. Jackson and Robert De Niro in “Jackie Brown.” Nothing against those stars, but Bey and Hawkes are at least as cued in to the lowlife rhythms of Ordell and Louis’s haphazard scheme as the bigger-name actors.
Among the problems with the movie is that Leonard’s story has an ironic, “Ruthless People”-like stall built into the middle of it, which is easier to savor on the page than in a movie. Director Daniel Schechter works in such a modest key that his fondness for actors doesn’t get the structure it deserves, and the circa-1978 trappings pale next to the juicy period blitz of “American Hustle.”
The other players include Will Forte as Mickey’s lily-livered secret admirer (whose surprise appearance in the middle of the kidnapping leads to a funny subplot), “Sons of Anarchy” hair-beast Mark Boone Junior, and Isla Fisher as Frank’s conniving mistress.
As for Aniston, the film doesn’t make enough room for her particular comic talents — and having to spend part of her role with her face covered by a mask doesn’t help.
Hawkes and Bey are the core of the picture, and it would be fun to see them again in something underhanded — an update of Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet, perpetually one step behind the smarter people in the world.
“Life of Crime” (2 stars)
Two crooks (John Hawkes and Yasiin Bey) kidnap a trophy wife (Jennifer Aniston), but things go absurdly wrong. This mild film has a strong cast (Will Forte and Tim Robbins are in there too) but it’s got a low-rent community-theater feel to it. Based on Elmore Leonard’s novel “Switch.”
Rating: R, for violence, language
Showing: Sundance Cinemas
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
