Monday, September 10, 2007 Rant Archive
To heck with EVEN MONEY. I’ll give you three-to-one odds that you won’t enjoy this flick, despite its surprisingly excellent cast. Whodathunk so many great actors would need cash so badly? And Kim Bassinger is also in the movie.
How bad is the film? The special features are trailers for other movies. It’s as though no one connected with EVEN MONEY wanted any further association with it. No director’s or actors’ commentaries. No behind the scenes documentary. Just a: “Let’s slap a couple of trailers on here so no one will feel entirely cheated.
Cheated of course is an appropriate emotion for this film about the evils of gambling. There are several inter-related tales that sort of come together in the end, a kind of homage to CRASH. Homage of course is French for “we don’t have a lot of time, so let’s copy something that’s won a lot of awards.”
Story one: Carolyn Carver (Bassinger) is the author of well received first novel who tells her husband Tom (Ray Liotta) that she’s writing her second book in a coffee shop. All the while she’s really in a casino, slot machining her family’s savings and daughter’s college fund away.
Story two: Clyde Snow (Forest Whitaker) is a handyman in debt to his bookies. They force him to get his younger brother Godfrey (Nick Cannon), a highly-ranked NBA prospect, to shave points in a collegiate conference championship game.
Story three: Augie (Jay Mohr) and Murph (Grant Sullivan) are childhood friends who went into business together – as bookies.
The jig is up for our faux Tom (Joel Gretch.) But, with Meghan (Jenni Baird) and Diana (Jacquilin Mckenzie) on the case, that’s not surprising. These are two smart cookies, and it wasn’t going to take them long to figure out that something just wasn’t right with Tom’s new colder than ice attitude. What I can’t understand is why the marked ever thought they could slide by with this charade in the first place. And now that Meghan and Diana have figured out how to remove the entity from Tom, the marked may have to reassess their plans, whatever they may be. The only hitch in this kiddy up is the fact that the procedure to expel this unwanted intruder in Tom’s body is a dangerous one. But, that’s never really stopped NTAC before. Meanwhile, Shawn (Patrick Flueger) may have found somebody to help him rescue Dr. Kevin (Jeffrey Combs) from Promise City, where he’s been held as an unwilling guest of Jordan (Billy Campbell) and his crew.
With Promise City growing by leaps and bounds, thanks to Jordan’s messianic pull, it’s getting harder and harder to ensure that everybody who’s there is on their side; and in tonight’s episode of THE 4400, Jordan my end up being the victim of an infiltrator. You would think the gate keepers of this Utopia would be able to spot a fraud, but keep in mind that everyone there has a unique power of their own, which makes it a little difficult to keep up with. That being said, Jordan has managed to get out of even worse situations – hell he came back from the dead didn’t he? Besides, even if somebody was able to abolish Jordan for good there is always one of his loyal followers to take over in his place. Up until last year, Shawn would have been, and was, his approved of successor. Now, there is Kyle (Chad Faust) to take over the roll of benevolent leader.
Before the Internet, before home video, before Deep Throat and The Devil in Miss Jones, America was a very puritanical country. That’s not to say that there weren’t naked breasts. It’s just that they had to be cloaked in an aura of respectability. So very often those grainy black and white movies made for distribution in those dirty little theaters populated by men in dirty little raincoats featured an actor playing a doctor who explained which part went where and why. Thus they were officially not porn, but educational flicks. In this great democracy of ours, even people in dirty rain coats are entitled to be educated. God bless America.
I mention this now because there is a great deal of graphic sex in TELL ME YOU LOVE ME, the new ten-episode series on HBO (Sundays at 9 p.m.). I am concerned that some of you who tune in while perhaps switching channels on the remote may catch an unwanted glimpse of a penis or pubic hair or any number of nipples bared before the camera. I fear you may wind up erroneously and needlessly offended. At the outset, let me reassure you all that each of the couples in the series is going to a therapist – or will go before the series concludes. So, since there’s a doctor involved the series could not possibly be porn and by extension must be educational.