Bruce
Willis stars as a down and out ex-skateboarder-turned-ex-cop-turned-private-dick
who works out of Venice Beach with his annoying sidekick Thomas Middleditch.
While trying to repo his buddy’s car, Willis accidentally draws the ire
of a local drug kingpin (Jason Momoa), who takes his revenge by stealing Bruce’s
dog. Naturally, the dog winds up
changing owners several times in the course of a day, leading Bruce on a
harebrained quest to get it back.
I
have a soft spot in my heart for these Tarantino knockoff crime comedies. They don’t make too many of them anymore, at
least any that are worth a damn, so it’s kind of fun to spot one in the wild. Like so many of these things, Once Upon a Time
in Venice features a lot of surf music on the soundtrack, characters making pop
culture references, and shots from inside a trunk. (In addition, there’s also a Fight Club-inspired
scene of a character faking his way into a support group.) Nobody in
their right mind would call this a classic (or a return to form by Willis for
that matter), but it’s a pretty funny, empty calories flick that at least has
the benefit of a good cast playing an array of colorful characters.
Bruce
has been accused of sleepwalking through his movies lately, but he (mostly) shows
up for this one. Although it was hardly
a challenging role, he seems funnier and looser here than he’s been in a while.
John Goodman has some good moments as
his surfer dude best friend who sometimes joins him on a job as back-up. They have genuine chemistry together, enough
to make you wish they were working with stronger material. Momoa also seems to be having fun with what
is admittedly a stereotypical role.
Once
Upon a Time in Venice comes to us from the writers of Cop Out, which also
starred Willis. I liked that one more
than most, and I’m probably on the same arc of the spectrum with this one. It’s not great by any means but liked it more
than your average critic.
In
fact, the beginning is a lot of fun and gave me hope this would actually be
some sort of minor classic. It starts
off great with a funny bit where Willis gives a foulmouthed pep talk to a bunch
of skateboarding kids. There’s also a
memorable scene where some bad guys get the drop on Bruce while he’s in the
throes of passion, forcing him to escape into the night in the nude. This leads to an extended chase where he
evades his pursuers while skateboarding naked through the streets of
Venice. The moment where some cops stop
him and cause him to conceal his gun in an unlikely holster is the perfect
cherry on top of this already funny sequence.
Despite
a breezy and amusing first act, the film starts to chase its tail ironically
enough when Bruce’s dog gets stolen.
Once he goes out looking for his lost pooch, the movie slowly begins to
run out of steam. The ending feels a bit
anticlimactic too. Although most of the
cast is fun to watch, I could’ve easily done without Middleditch’s character
entirely (he also acts as the completely gratuitous narrator), and I was a bit
miffed that Famke Janssen was totally wasted in two forgettable scenes. Still, despite all that, it’s still kind of refreshing
to see a DTV flick that at least tries to color outside the lines, even if the
results are a bit messy.
AKA: L.A. Rush.
AKA: L.A. Vengeance.
No comments:
Post a Comment