Life of Crime

I enjoyed this film a lot. It's not ground breaking or stylish or full of violence. It's nice and easy with funny characters and some laugh out loud moments. A we'll put together, charming film.

The summary of this described it as a comedy. I didn't find it funny.

"Life of Crime" from 2013 is based on an Elmore Leonard story, "The Switch," which has some of the same characters as "Jackie Brown." Sadly this is not in Jackie Brown's league. I'll give it this - it has a great soundtrack.

Jennifer Aniston stars as Mickey, married to a prize jerk, Frank (Tim Robbins), who is involved in shady real estate deals and tax evasion. Unbeknownst to her, he's channeling money to a secret bank account, and his trips include meeting up with a young girlfriend Melanie (Isla Fisher). He also plans on divorcing Mickey and marrying Melanie.

Louis (John Hawkes) and Ordell (Mos Def) have the idea of kidnapping Mickey and holding her for a million dollars ransom. They figure they know too much about his illegal activities for him to refuse.

It turns out that the only one with any brains is Melanie. When Frank gets the phone call about Mickey, Melanie takes over. She starts taking the phone calls, claiming Frank isn't around. It finally occurs to the kidnappers that Frank doesn't really want Mickey back.

There are two other men in the plot who are potentially trouble, but in different ways. There is the neo-Nazi racist with more guns than the Army (Mark Boone Junior) and a guy (Will Forte) who bonds with Mickey.

This just didn't hang together for me. It certainly isn't up to the standard of Elmore Leonard as filmed by Tarantino. I think the filmmakers were going for a Tarantino/Cohen Brothers type of movie, but they didn't pull it off.

"Life of Crime" has good ensemble acting and some funny dialogue, but its pace is off, and it has a low-budget feel to it. It also lacks the layers of films like "Fargo" or "Jackie Brown."

I've never been a fan of Jennifer Aniston's, and this didn't move her up on my list. I consider her just okay. When I think of female stars who can carry a film, she isn't one.

It's an interesting film that's trying to be a dark comedy but it's not as dark as I would have expected, which made the laughs long in-between.

I've seen this type of comedy in which the victim befriends the captives because their life was not as put together as hoped. This one takes a slower dramatic pace.

Their were some pretty top notch actors in the film like Tim Robbins, John Hawkes and even Mos Def. It's interesting that Jennifer Aniston took on such a small picture, but maybe they thought her appearance would put people in seats(which I guess is true).

Thought the story was good but the pace of the movie just puts me to sleep (Maybe I actually missed the really fun parts while snoring). Don't kill your time with this one.

In Life of Crime, unlike many crime thrillers, the focus is on the characters rather than on achievement of maximum possible violence. All of the major characters have their stories and some of them seem to learn from their foolish and sometimes implausible actions. To me, it's refreshing to watch a crime movie in which things continually go wrong as the limitations of the characters are revealed. There's violence, a natural accompaniment to crime, but it's normal violence, not extreme and glamorous solutions to problems of psychotics. And people respond to it in ways that are sometimes smart and sometimes stupid. This is a genre movie that's far better than most.

A loose prequel of sorts for the criminal players of Jackie Brown, based on Elmore Leonard's novel The Switch. It's not Jackie, no two ways about it, and it's unfair to compare the two... unfair, but inevitable since they're so spiritually related. The stakes are much lower this time, with a simple kidnapping plot the main point of action and few of the deliciously tangled interwoven story lines of the Tarantino flick. In Leonard's hands that still made for a wildly entertaining read, but on the screen it feels a bit on the shallow side. This translation is missing the charm and finesse of its source material, too, and a little of that spice can really go a long way. John Hawkes manages a really convincing, greasy De Niro impression as the soft-hearted enforcer Louis, while Mos Def's take on mastermind Ordell Robbie (originally played by Samuel L. Jackson) is less indebted to his predecessor. Jennifer Aniston is good as the repressed trophy wife / tennis mom / kidnappee, but the rest of the cast just seems like they're wearing costumes and playing games. They take themselves lightly, so it's tough for me to see the situation as all that serious. It's fine, superficial at worst, but there's little wonder why it slipped under the radar without a whimper when it hit the screens a couple of years ago.