The Big Bounce (Widescreen Edition)

Rating:
Summary: Great Elmore Leonard, Great Cast, and Very Thin Story
Review: This is the second film version of Elmore Leonard's 'The Big Bounce' published in 1969. In the same year, they made a film starring Ryan O'Neal, which Elmore Leonard, himself a great film buff, didn't like. Now, for the newer version, Hollywood assembled very impressive cast, plus the director George Armitage, who did a pretty good job in 'Grosse Pointe Blank.' SO ... what happened to this newer film, which is so thin in contents?

Not everything is bad, and the star Owen Wilson is not to be blamed. He plays a very likable small-time thief Jack Ryan, who fell for a gorgeous girl Nancy in Hawaii. Nancy (played by newcomer Sara Foster) is game for fun, and petty crimes too, but this time the stake is high. She encourages Jack to steal $200,000 hidden in the house of one rich guy Ray, with whom she is having an affair. The story is a typical Elmore Leonard.

See this great cast. In addition to Wilson and Foster, you get Morgan Freeman, Gary Sinise, Charlie Sheen, Vinnie Jones, Bebe Neuwirth, Willie Nelson, and Harry Dean Stanton. The film is entirely shot on location in beautiful Hawaii, so you can enjoy the blue sea and the landscapes.

And ... what a thin story! The main story is too cursorily told to interest us, and the pretty amusing performances of the talented actors are sadly thrown away among the weak plot, which gets lost among the pointless set-pieces. One example. Vinnie Jones plays a hot-tempered supervisor of a construction site. In the middle part of the film, he terrorizes Wilson and Freeman, riding a RV. The scene happens and ends suddenly, out of the context of the film. The motives of characters, or the relations between them, often lack enough explanation, leaving us wonder 'who is he, anyway?'

I do not know Elmore Leonard's personal reaction to this film. He must have seen it already, and most probably he didn't like it. Very sporadically the film shows the unmistakable touch of Leonard's -- good dialogues and unpredictable story -- but you need an ear of Tarantino to make his great books into equally great films.

Rating:
Summary: you won't believe this
Review: This movie sucks !!! big time !!!!. i wish i was watching grass grow or paint dry instead.
One of my friends went to sleep while watching this movie.
Another ran away.
The third started driving towards tuscon
The fourth one ( me) had to suffer thru this meeting.

I think the director/producers have to pay me for watching this movie.