A whole mess of movies came out this week, but it wasn't ripe pickings in my book. I aired out my pre-emptive beefs with \The Rules of Attraction"" in this space last week, and my desire to see every blonde ever in ""White Oleander"" was minimal at best. So I opted for ""Knockaround Guys,"" and what I got wasn't bad, but only for a movie that had been shelved for three years.
""Knockaround Guys"" centers around Matty (Barry Pepper of ""61*"" and ""We Were Soldiers""), the son of a mob boss, who resigns himself to a mobster's life after failing to land a straight job because of his background. His mob career gets off to a rocky start when he and his friends botch a simple payoff pickup. This leads him and his friends, played by Vin Diesel, Seth Green and Andrew Davoli, into a small town in Wyoming to try to get the organization's money back and save face.
The movie was filmed in 1999, and it's not hard to see why it was shelved for three years. Above all, the script just weighs down the whole movie. It scares me that writer-directors Brian Koppelman and David Levien are allowed to write the screenplay for the forthcoming adaptation of John Grisham's ""Runaway Jury,"" which will feature John Cusack, Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman. They demonstrate clearly in ""Knockaround Guys"" that they're not up to the task of writing for good actors. It's almost criminal that they now get to write for great ones. In ""Knockaround Guys,"" all of the characters lack depth, and almost half of the dialogue seems less like conversation between friends and more like soliloquies for the purpose of providing background information to the audience. The script completely lacks subtlety, putting to waste a stellar cast.
Still, the cast is fun to watch at times. A pre-""61*"" Pepper demonstrates his great skill, even if he doesn't seem quite up to leading man status in the role. Diesel is cool and entertaining in a supporting role, with his familiar muscles and glistening head, though he clearly lacks some of the confidence that would soon make him a superstar. But the only real moments of truth in the movie emerge from the casual chemistry that intermittently surfaces between Pepper, Diesel and to a lesser extent Davoli in the times when the script doesn't confine them to contrived faux dialogue.
Unfortunately, not all of the marquis names had moments. Seth Green was given such a poorly developed character that nothing of real value emerged from his performance except the fun of seeing how he hasn't aged a day in the last three years. I seriously think he must be eternally stuck in youth, like Kirsten Dunst in ""Interview With the Vampire."" Meanwhile, Dennis Hopper is stuck in a role in which he doesn't get a chance to show off at all, which is a waste. John Malkovich has a larger role, but more than anything is distracting with his accent. In trying to sound like he's from Brooklyn, he sounds like Richard Dreyfuss trying to imitate Christopher Walken.
In the end, what's left with ""Knockaround Guys"" is a good story that's wasted on a lousy script and a great cast that's wasted on lousy characters. The movie was only released now because Vin Diesel has become a big box office draw, and it's not a bad movie, per se. It's entertaining overall, but it reaches such obvious and clich??d conclusions throughout that it's almost insulting to movie fans and is certainly not especially satisfying. Besides, for less money you can go rent ""Reservoir Dogs,"" a far superior movie of the same ilk.
