British writer/director Hadi Hajaig (with but four releases in two decades), had a decent, if derivative idea here, landing think-on-her-feet London lawyer Phoebe Fox at a crummy NYC diner to recruit low-grade parolees Sam Rockwell & Ben Schwartz for a tricky hand-off of negotiable bonds for a stolen mega-diamond (‘the blue iguana’) back in England. (The Stateside diner scene a late add-on to get Rockwell & Schwartz on board?*) Once ‘over there,’ the boys join two other players, but the drop goes badly and the race is on to recover loot and bauble. Silly violent stuff, but entertaining thanks to likable lowlifes, rat-a-tat dialogue & spot-on casting. Rockwell & Fox outstanding, with great personal chemistry. (Rockwell could have phoned it in, but the guy never does. A champ whatever you stick him in, and finally showing leading man chops rather than having to steal pics in support.) Third-act twists go on too long, but what really drags this down is its disconjunctive/over-active filming style, as if Hajaig grabbed the baton from Guy Ritchie’s ‘90s filming style and then couldn’t give it away. He just gets by on action sequences (though the editing frenzy fails to camouflage a multitude of staging sins), but not with simple things like straight-ahead table conversations or simple exposition dialog, farragoes of over-manipulated jump cuts and pointless fast-tracking showoff shots. Meantime, conveniently ‘planted’ setups for gags & plot twists (like having a Zombie Pic filming next door so any real gore goes unnoticed) is depressingly lazy. Makes you wonder how badly those ultra-violent ‘90s comedy capers have aged.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *The idea you’d cross the Atlantic to hire such lowlife losers only makes sense with a plot specifically targeting second-raters as a guarantee for failure. The twist coming when they succeed against all odds.
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