Review: Life of Crime
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
It's prevented from capturing a proper pace by one-note players and a nagging immobility, deadly problems when you're attempting to adapt the two-parts-crime, one-part-comedy cocktail Elmore Leonard's legendary for pouring.
City Paper grade: C+
Cutting the calculated period style of American Hustle with the kidnapping-as-therapy function of The Ref, Daniel Schechter’s staging of late-inning Elmore Leonard novel The Switch has all the looks and many of the inveterate laughs. But it’s prevented from capturing a proper pace by one-note players and a nagging immobility, deadly problems when you’re attempting to adapt the two-parts-crime, one-part-comedy cocktail Leonard’s legendary for pouring. Antsy hoods looking for a big score in a snowy, slushy 1970s Detroit, Ordell (Mos Def) and Louis (John Hawkes) set sights on Frank (Tim Robbins), a hard-drinking country club type who’s made his fortune as a shady slumlord. Wise to the fact that he’s squirreling cash away in a Bahamian bank account, the pair nabs Frank’s long-suffering wife, Mickey (Jennifer Aniston), with the aim of leveraging her life for a cool mil. But the straightforward scheme goes crooked quickly, complicated by a hapless philanderer (Will Forte), a conniving mistress (Isla Fisher) and a heavily armed neo-Nazi (Mark Boone Junior) who can’t keep the plan straight. Hawkes, as he is wont to do, is strong as the secretly sensitive point man whose feelings for Mickey muck up the money grab, but the script does very few favors for anyone else. Many of the characters seem to be talking simply to fill up time.
