It’s no surprise that Jennifer Aniston’s name is alongside the late Elmore Leonard’s in the credits as an Executive Producer. Her Mickey Dawson is one of those fiery female characters Leonard liked to pit against an array of con-men, gaudy pimps and — in the case of LIFE OF CRIME, based on his novel The Switch — inept and bungling kidnappers.
Set in Detroit in 1978, the date the novel was published (a gift to the set and costume designers) LIFE OF CRIME is a typically colourful and enjoyable tale of a caper gone wrong. Small-timers Ordell Robbie (Mos Def) and Louis Gara (John Hawkes) abduct Mickey, a trophy wife to real-estate man Frank Dawson (Tim Robbins), whose status is by some margin less important to Frank than his golf trophies. A handsome amount of ransom loot seems assured as the kidnappers catch wind of Frank’s sideline in illegal assets — apartment blocks in the Bahamas. He also keeps another undeclared asset there in the shape of the toothsome Melanie.
“The basic set-up had been used successfully in the 1980s in RUTHLESS PEOPLE..”
As usual with Leonard, the working out of the plot and incidental detail are never less than satisfying. Comeuppance is reserved for the bad guys, and the only real lethal violence is meted out to the story’s most grotesquely unsympathetic character — and even he has many comic moments. Adding lustre to the cast are Will Forte, so memorable in NEBRASKA, as Mickey’s hapless admirer, hovering up after the messy kidnap, and Isla Fisher as Melanie who turns out to be anything but eye candy.
The basic set-up had been used successfully in the 1980s in RUTHLESS PEOPLE, where the kidnapped Bette Midler sets about turning the tables on her singularly uncaring husband Danny de Vito. Around this time various attempts were made to capture and bottle the lightning of Elmore Leonard’s dialogue and characters. However, it wasn’t really till GET SHORTY and OUT OF SIGHT in the 1990s that everything worked, surely a tribute to the heightened theatrical dialogue and interplay in Quentin Tarantino’s PULP FICTION, out ahead, showing how it was done. Tarantino repaid the compliment in JACKIE BROWN, his version of Leonard’s RUM PUNCH, which handed solid roles to among others Samuel L. Jackson and Robert de Niro, playing the recurring Ordell and Louis.
Yet LIFE OF CRIME finally suffers from the same problem as JACKIE BROWN — a respectful stateliness and a consequent uncertainty of tone. The fact that the kidnappers can stop in the middle of the kidnap situation and tell each other jokes is one thing, but the audience can’t be expected to take all the anti-semitic and racist cracks, supposedly licensed by the 1978 setting. These received a sharp intake of breath, whereas much of the broad comedy woven expertly into the film by the director and adapter Daniel Schechter was greeted by near-silence. A pity, because the cast steers a perfect course between deadpan comedy and sudden bloodshed, led by Jennifer Aniston who shows once again what she can do given a decent part.
httpvh://youtu.be/M29yK7WWeKY