Harold Ramis’ needlessly graphic slapstick heist noir is as queer a fish as it sounds. Neither one thing nor the other, it flip-flops – like protagonist John Cusack – between shark-eyed buck-chasing and spasmodic twinges of morality. As noted with laudable honesty by screenwriter Richard Russo in a reasonably revealing panel chat, the process of rewriting Scott Phillips’ pulpy novel was, necessarily, hugely reductive. And it shows (at times painfully). But Russo’s key slip was the bizarre decision to drag forward the original 1979 setting by a couple of decades. Uprooted and re-planted in modern, wintry Wichita, the glut of gyrating strippers and sozzled businessmen feels weirdly anachronistic.
An impossibly shifty Billy Bob Thornton and show-stealing piss artist Oliver Platt keep us, uh, frozen to the sofa, but in the end Ramis drops the ball too often (as evidenced by two far superior ‘alternative endings’) to deliver what should’ve been a sour little cult classic.
