Customer Reviews

Best Laid Plans

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This film was much better than I expected. I was expecting some mediocre teen movie but this is stunning. A great simple story: a couple try to rip someone off to pay back a debt. What could be simpler? How about when everything goes wrong? Do not want to give anything away but this story had a great and unexpected twist. The build up is very convincing and even when you think the story is going down one alley, it doesn't.

Reese Witherspoon and Alessandro Nivola are wonderful as the lovers trying to get out of Tropico: a dead end town and Josh Brolin does a convincing job as a hysterical up and coming yuppie who thinks he has committed the ultimate crime.

There are plenty of magic elements: the economics-major thug professing Adam Smith as a justification for violence, Nivola's way of avoiding a TV advert giving the game away and the cause of the brushfire are just three.

Watch this and enjoy the treat and if you see it on DVD see if you agree that the alternate ending is much better: positive but not as upbeat.

Well, I think that thrillers often get a little overdone. Anyone who watches many movies will probably agree. I felt like this movie was one movie that stayed believable, yet still kept the audience enthralled in the storyline.

This movie started off kind of slow, which may irk some of the viewers who want to get into it. However, this movie had one of the best and unpredictable endings in a thriller I've ever seen. This alone made the movie worth it.

I thought the young actors, notably Reese Witherspoon, were admirable in their roles. There was not really any bad acting in this movie. The script was well founded, and I thought that this was an original and creative idea.

Many of the twists of the movie are explained through characters actions rather than overt telling of plot sequences. This is a movie that starts a bit of a ways in, then retraces its steps, and then continues on through the movie.

If you are a moviegoer that enjoys twists and unpredictable endings, then I think this is the movie to watch.

Despite an intriguing set-up and attractive cast, this tepid wannabe film noir blows its potential with uneven pacing, idiotic plot twists, and a weak third act. The abrupt, out-of-left-field ending, replete with a half-hearted attempt at a dramatic payoff, only adds insult to injury. The supposedly black comedy that other reviewers mention seemed to have eluded me entirely. The rip-off wave between friends is set up nicely, but the characters are flat and uninteresting, and the self-consciously stylish cinematography didn't help in getting into them, just leaving a hollowly stylish exterior. A drab and ultimately forgettable film, not a bad way to kill an afternoon perhaps but surely not a keeper.

This film illistrates the human desire for freedom. A man (Nivola) has fallen in a hole and he needs cash fast. His girfriend (Witherspoon) goes to the extremes to dig him out. This is Witherspoons finest role yet. She takes you deep inside her characters mind and shows how love and compassion direct the character through her toughest decisions. Lissa (witherspoon) and her boyfriend (Nivola) need to get out of this town- find out what they will do to do so.

The film catches your attention immediately, and doesn't let go until the climax, which is after we've encountered a few surprising plot twists.This film is fresh, and unpredictable. I like that in a film. It doesn't even aspire to be hip, it just comes naturally. This film substitues your average "thrill" with an intense, intelligent plot. Perhaps the people who have written other reviews wanted the typical shoot'em up hollywood ending. I,on the other hand, prefer something better. The film is great as it is, and far from typical.

This film is not engaging at all; you don't care about what happens to the characters and the plot is utterly predictable at every turn. I had read good things about this movie and about Reese Witherspoon's performance, but both are utterly flat.

This makes for a good late night HBO movie when you are bored. Not worth the money spent to own , nor the time spent watching it. IF it was 20 years ago I might have said it was a good movie , but nowadays its just too boring and obvious.

This mostly forgotten thriller starring Reese Witherspoon (Lissa) and Alessandro Nivola (Nick) suffers from a mightily contrived plot and a "Huh?--What happened?" ending. Nick is a guy who works at the local recycling plant (that's a new workplace for celluloid protagonists) who is about to inherit some big bucks from his father who has just kicked the bucket.

Meanwhile some of his coworkers are scheming up a plot to...well, no spoilers here. Let's just say that the viewer does not find out about this plot until the end, and then it seems a little...well, lame.

Along comes Lissa looking mighty fine and they fall in love, although I must say the chemistry certainly didn't spark up the screen. Now comes complication number one: the old man blew almost all his money and what he didn't blow the IRS is grabbing. Because of this Nick gets tempted into driving a get-away car for a drug rip off... Things go awry and Nick ends up in deep doo-doo, and in desperation gets Lissa to help him rip off an old school chum...which... Well, what these people do in desperation is a little on the unbelievable side.

I'm sorry that's all vague, but at least it's enough information to let you know if you actually saw this movie or not. Now, if you like probability-challenged, convoluted plots with loose ends and a lot of unlikely twists and turns, you might find this movie interesting. And if you like Reese, and you should, you might also find a reason for sticking around until the end. I know I did. She does a good job and looks good doing it.

Bottom line: although the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, it can also be said that the most meticulously contrived plots sometimes turn out about as convincing as pseudoscience. Incidentally the title is a paraphrase of the 18th century Scottish poet Robert Burns's line: "The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men/Gang aft a-gley."

I thought this movie would be a great thriller. I've seen Reese Witherspoon in enough movies to know she's a great actress, and it sounded interesting enough from reading the jacket. BUT, I have to say that, overall, although the film was visually stunning more often than not (very stylized sets, nice color combinations, costume colors, interesting shots, etc, etc), and the two main characters Nick (Alessandro Nivola) and Lissa (Reese Witherspoon) were likable, the film isn't much to write home about. My main complaint is that there wasn't enough plot to go around, and that when the chips finally fall, you're wondering why there weren't more of them! I also wonder why the writer (or director/editor), who ended up with a decent budget, nice sets, great actors, etc, didn't do more to flesh it out, or add a couple more twists/characters/background info. I think this quite easily could have been made into a great film. However, as it stands, its a stylish jaunt into film-making which, although not precisely shallow, per se, leaves a lot to be desired. Interestingly, after watching the deleted scenes and learning a bit more about the script and the changes that were made to the story/scenes, the film seemed richer and more complex, (better!) than I'd first thought. I think the DVD's deleted scenes really would have added enough to make this luke-warm film, not great, but maybe "good enough." The best thematic elements which explain the "why's" and "why-nots" of this film, inexplicably seemed to end up on the cutting room floor. Bottom Line: "Watch it before you buy it."

...where do I begin. Probably with the fact that the only reason I watched it is because my girlfriend threatened me to. This is movie is sooo desperate to be a post modern crime thriller that it looks and feels so relentlessly superficial. Most scenes are decked out in unpleasant pastel colors and interiors are always lit with warm lights. Not very realistic. Something else that is quite unreal is the scene in which Nivola and Witherspoon discuss their forthcoming crime...on a roof in front of a neon sign on a sofa. Yeah...like people keep sofas on roofs in front of neon signs. This was obviously an attempt by the director to add a little sparkle to an otherwise BORING scene. Which is also the reason he throws in some cliched camera angles. It's a "film noir" you see...so diagonal shots on an ordinary scene are standard. Composer Craig Armstrong was obviously hired at the last minute when the director heard the score for Romeo and Juliet to provide an irrating and superficial (that word again) soundtrack. It sounds like it belongs in a totally different movie.

One last gripe...the "twist" was obvious to me. I guess it at the very start and the whole thing was SOOO predictable. It had the predictablity curve of paint drying and the interest curve of cleaning a 300-year-old stove with a 3-haired tooth brush and some spit. I also felt no chemistry between the 2 leads whatsoever.

In case your wondering my girlfriend lists this as number 2 in her top 3 movies. Number 1 is Devils Advocate and 3 is Moonwalker...ugh!