Cathardincu Surprisingly incoherent and boring

RyothChatty ridiculous rating

GazerRise Fantastic!

SteinMo What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.

grantss Surprisingly good. Starts off in very silly and random fashion, but gets better and better as it goes on. The twists toward the end are great, and completely unpredictable.Great cast, of stars and stars-to-be: Christopher Walken, Dennis Leary, Jay Mohr, Sean Patrick Flannery. Christopher Walken brings his usual brooding intensity, Dennis Leary the humour and wisecracks (apparently many of his lines were ad libbed) and Jay Mohr the insanity. Also includes Johnny Galecki, long before he was famous for Big Bang Theory, and Laura San Giacomo in a minor role.

Robert J. Maxwell A sort of frat boy and his girl friend get lost in uptown New York and the girl is kidnapped. Two million dollars in ransom is demanded. Her finger arrives in the mail. (I think this is what happens anyway. I missed a few critical minutes at the beginning.) The frat boy organizes a handful of his upper-middle-class friends and they manage to kidnap a notorious capo, Christopher Walken, who is either behind the kidnapping or knows who is, and so will help them retrieve the rest of her body, minus the finger. They chloroform him and take him to an empty mansion on Long Island where, to convince him they are hard-hearted and determined, instead of the inexperienced nudniks they are, they remove his finger while he's unconscious.Walken wakes up in this large house belonging to one of the preppies and the rest of the film is taken up with his trying to get the girl back from the wheelchair he is duct-taped into.Doesn't sound too promising. It's mostly shot on one set, like a filmed play. But three things lift this effort above the level I'd expected.One is the working out of the plot, which has several unexpected pirouettes. The kidnapping is pegged by the mob almost immediately as "an inside job," which is about as far as attorney-client privilege will allow me to go.The second is the dialog, which has innumerable sparkles in it -- and that's critical because it's a talky movie. Some lines are very amusing. Some are dead serious. Here's one of the funnier ones. Walken is taped into his chair and has to pee. So how will it be managed? Do they free his hands, something they're understandable loathe to do, or does somebody unzip Walken and make sure he evacuates his bladder in a tidy manner? ("Aim him good!", cries the chubby little kid whose parents own the mansion.) While this mission is being discussed, Walken contributes his point of view. "If somebody is going to be holding hands with my ****, can I at least get a drink first? I'm not asking for dinner and dancing. I'm not asking for a commitment." The third is the acting. Man, do these guys put it across. Especially notable are Dennis Leary as Walken's chief agent, and Walken himself. Neither steps wrong. Christopher Walken is a marvelous actor. He's confined to a chair. He's bled half to death. He's strung out behind some analgesics and booze. And his set expression is one that artfully blends boredom with mild interest in the proceedings. At times he speaks like the soul of reason amidst these adolescent collisions of will. The director, Peter O'Fallon, gives us multiple reaction shots of Walker placidly watching the arguments and barbs being thrown back and forth by his captors, and they're funny as hell.But don't be misled. It's not ALL talk. There's action too for the aficionados. Several shootings take place and while none of them results in a bath tub full of gore and splattered brains, none is done for laughs either.It's well written, nicely directed, and the cast is fine.

sideburnmikeguitar This is a fun movie about a kidnapping gone wrong. The kidnappers are generally spoiled, rich "kids" in their 20s who trick an old mobster, played by Christopher Walken, into taking a ride with them. They hold him hostage and he cleverly manipulates them to fight with each other. there's nothing too dark, and the dialog and dynamic with the younger characters is really solid. Dennis Leary's mobster role is funny and angry and brutal in just the right doses.***Possible spoiler*** Most of the way through the film I was convinced there would be a killer climax. The problem is that the story is leading you to believe that there's an "inside man..." but when you find out who it really is, it seems misleading. The motivations behind the actions of the kidnappers don't quite add up, particularly Avery and Max's interaction. The flashback sections of the story lead you to think one way, but don't come off as too convincing. On the other hand, the movie's good at digging into these different personalities and Walken, Leary and the Ira character are really compelling. (It seems a lot of people didn't like Ira but he's pretty a very important foil for the others and the film would lose a lot without him. Plus, he's awfully convincing as the uptight kiss-up geek.) The twists are pretty cool, and not too tricky to get, just a little contradictory when you consider all the different ways the movie could have gone. But this was the way to make it interesting and not so obvious.Well worth renting or picking up used.

serpent_coil I admit I only saw this movie because it starred Christopher Walken and I figured it would at least be worth the time. And sure enough... I liked it. Sure, there were more then a few strange holes in the plot. And sure, you won't be seeing any Oscar-worthy performances. But I enjoyed it nonetheless goddammit! Sometimes you just have to watch a movie without overanalysing it and just enjoy the ride. I guess one of the things you could get hung up on is the fact that the whole set-up for the movie depends on the fact whether a mob-boss chooses to get in a car with a gang of youngsters he's never seen before to join for dinner with one of their fathers. A bit hard to swallow I'll admit. But hey, if you accept that someone could acquire superpowers by getting bitten by a radioactive spider this is a small leap of faith. Anyway, there are more of these strange irregularities in the script but I'll take a few strange coincidences for the sake of a good movie. What I'm having a harder time dealing with is the strange tone. It's like the director couldn't make up his mind whether to make it a dark comedy or a thriller/gangster film. Now it just sort of stumbles in between. A shame really, because it is a great set up with a rather unusual hostage situation where the hostage gradually takes control of and turns the tables on his kidnappers. In the right hands this could have been a fantastic movie instead of just a good one.6/10