Product Details

• Actors: Alessandro Nivola, Reese Witherspoon, Josh Brolin, Gene Wolande, Jonathan McMurtry
• Directors: Mike Barker
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: 20th Century Fox
• VHS Release Date: September 5, 2000
• Run Time: 92 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00003Q430
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #58,260 in Video (See Bestsellers in Video)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

At first, Best Laid Plans comes off like yet another all-flash-no-substance crime thriller, but it's one of those rare films that end better than they start. Nick (Alessandro Nivola from Face/Off), broke and desperate to get out of his suffocating small town, agrees to take part in a drug heist. When his partners get caught, he has less than a week to come up with $15,000 or suffer the consequences. When his college buddy Brice (Josh Brolin--Flirting with Disaster) comes back to town, Nick and his girlfriend Lissa (Reese Witherspoon) hatch a plan to bilk Brice out of a rare collectible. Of course, things go wrong--which is where things get entertaining. The plot could use a few more twists to really crackle, but the surprises it does have work, and the ending is both clever and affecting. Along the way, the best scene features a drug dealer who quotes economic theory from the bible of capitalism, The Wealth of Nations. In the past few years, Witherspoon has turned in superb performances in such varied movies as Freeway, Pleasantville, and especially Election; Best Laid Plans doesn't make much use of her talent, but she's always watchable. --Bret Fetzer

From The New Yorker

Mike Barker's movie is about a dirty little crime in an unnoticed town. One night, Nick (Alessandro Nivola) gets a call for help from his buddy Bryce (Josh Brolin); Bryce just met a girl called Lissa (Reese Witherspoon) in a bar and took her home. Now she is crying rape. Given the noirish air of sleaze and disloyalty that prevails, you would expect Bryce's plight to grow deeper and more tangled as the story proceeds; instead, everything gradually dwindles into mishap and minor acts of greed. Barker and his screenwriter, Ted Griffin, have taken pains to make their twists as tight as possible, and there is a true stab of comic surprise in some of the flashback scenes; yet the final impression is one of undernourishment. There's a lack of confidence in the way that plain patches are jazzed up with camera tilts and slurs of slow motion, and you end up feeling that the cast simply isn't old enough or scarred enough for these shenanigans; try as she might, Witherspoon is much too perky and affable a presence for this world of sluttish schemes. On the plus side, it's always a pleasure to meet a villain so skilled in his cupidity that he quotes Adam Smith. -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Does coca cola really irritate your sinuses?, March 28, 2000

By	Bhanu Dhir "[e-mail]" (UK) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Best Laid Plans (DVD)

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.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The ending alone makes the movie, July 15, 2002

By	fra7299 "fra7299" (California, United States) - See all my reviews

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.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Fabulous Style, But Not Much Underneath, November 25, 2000

By	"eurotrashgirl" (s e a t t l e) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Best Laid Plans (DVD)

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."