One For the Money Blu-ray Review
Let's just skip to "four" and go.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, April 25, 2012
The last couple of years haven't been especially auspicious for films dealing with bounty hunters. The inventively
named
The Bounty Hunter paired Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler as squabbling exes who were supposedly
comically brought together when Butler's character, a hapless bail enforcement agent, was charged with tracking down
Aniston's character, an investigative reporter who skipped a bond hearing on a minor charge in order to pursue a lead.
Results were tepid at best, though the film managed to rake in considerable dough, probably mostly due to the star
power of its lead duo. Now we have
One for the Money, a film which posits Katherine Heigl and Jason O'Mara
as (guess what?) squabbling exes (more or less) who are supposedly comically brought together when Heigl's
character Stephanie Plum, a down on her luck lingerie saleswoman begs for work at her cousin Vinnie's skip tracing firm,
and ends up getting the plumb (pun intended) assignment of bringing in her long ago boyfriend Joe Morelli (O'Mara), a
cop who is wanted for apparently having shot an unarmed man. The one remarkable thing about
One for the
Money, which is otherwise a pretty relentlessly unremarkable film, is that it is based on a hugely successful
franchise of novels by Janet Evanovich, one that would seem to be tailor made for a lighter than air series of crime
thrillers featuring an inexperienced (and often inept) investigator who more or less stumbles into catching the bad guys.
One for the Money was evidently optioned years ago and spent many a moon in development hell, and some
wags might aver it may have needed a bit more time there to bake more fully, for while not an out and out disaster, the
film is notably lacking in thrills or breeziness, two elements which regularly inform Evanovich's writing.
Janet Evanovich has built her career on smart, slightly anachronistic books which as with her long running Plum series
effortlessly tweak convention to deliver surprisingly entertaining, if never incredibly deep, fare. How odd is it then that
the
film adaptation of
One for the Money is so insistently formulaic? We get Stephanie eccentric family, highlighted
by
a winning turn by Debbie Reynolds as Stephanie's out there grandmother, and we get Stephanie's obnoxious cousin
Vinnie (Patrick Fischler) and his wisecracking secretary Connie (Ana Reeder). Then we get stalwart aide Ranger (Daniel
Sunjata), a kind of Dwayne Johnson-esque figure who is brought on board to show Stephanie the ropes of little things
like, you know, actually knowing how to shoot at a suspect who might be attacking or trying to escape. And then we
have
the putative villain of the case, a thuggish boxer named Benito Ramirez (Gavin-Keith Umeh), a guy who seems to be
going
around killing everyone who could clear Morelli. The film is stuffed to the gills with these supposedly wonderfully colorful
characters, which makes the ultra-beige results all the more surprising. A little energy is injected into the proceedings
by
a surprisingly effective Sherri Shepherd as a streetwalker named Lulu. John Leguizamo is also on hand as Ramirez's
manager, and anyone with half a brain (or maybe even a quarter of a brain) is going to see a supposed "twist" coming
late in the film with regard to his character.
If you can get past how utterly predictable virtually every moment of
One for the Money is, the film is reasonably
entertaining and it provides Heigl a decent enough opportunity to show off her light comedy chops, which are agreeable
enough. She does a nice job bringing Stephanie's grit to life, though the character's outright stupidity in a couple of key
sequences may be more annoying than endearing to most viewers. There's a certain chemistry between Heigl and
O'Mara, even if O'Mara's character is about as relentlessly stereotypical as they come. Some of the best work here is by
Sunjata as the intentionally opaque Ranger, a character who just kind of appears out of nowhere several times, takes
control, and then disappears into the mists of the night, off to chase more bad guys.
The biggest culprit here is probably director Julie Anne Robinson, who simply doesn't seem to know what exactly she
wants to do with this property. While there's some nice sweep and good use of locations (with Pittsburgh somewhat
humorously filling in for Evanovich's iconic Trenton, New Jersey), on a more intimate level, Robinson simply can't quite
help the audience connect to the vast array of supporting characters, with a couple of aforementioned exceptions. The
film lurches about, managing to sporadically deliver some effective moments (mostly in the comedic side of things, rarely
if ever in the putative thriller side of things), but overall feeling kind of enervated and directionless (no pun intended).
One for the Money was obviously supposed to be the debut of a new tent pole franchise, one that might have
appealed more to women than the typical fanboy clientele of summer sci-fi f/x laden behemoths. What might have
helped here is a greater sense of danger for the plucky but vulnerable Stephanie Plum. When she has not one but two
overly muscled alpha male types backing her up (even if one is her ostensible prey), there's never much doubt that
nothing
really bad will ever happen to her. The problem with
One for the Money is that it's not the
damsel who's in distress, but the film itself.
One For the Money Blu-ray, Overall Score and Recommendation
One for the Money is an odd case of having a lot of winning attributes, but never really gelling into anything that is
remotely as entertaining as it should be. Heigl is an appealing performer, and she does decent enough work here
establishing Stephanie Plum's pluck as well as her inherent incompetence, but the scheme Stephanie is assigned to uncover
never really bristles with danger or excitement the way it should. There's simply not enough atmosphere of menace in this
film to carry its supposed thriller elements along, which leaves
One for the Money clinging tenuously to its comedic
side, something it just
barely manages to do. Evanovich fans may get more of a kick out of this offering than the
public at large, but this is one of those "surefire" properties that pretty much misses the bullseye (much like Stephanie's
own shooting skills). The Blu-ray offers superior video and audio, and an okay assortment of supplements. Fans may want
to purchase it as a blind buy, but others would probably do best to check it out as a rental first.