Movie Review: $5 a Day (2008)

$5 a Day (2008) - USA - Comedy Drama - Rated PG-13

Directed by Nigel Cole

Starring Christopher Walken, Alessandro Nivola, Sharon Stone, Dean Cain, Peter Coyote, Amanda Peet, Luis Avalos

A light and tender comedy about an estranged con artist father and son connecting that also successfully connects with the viewer.

Flynn works as a health inspector in Los Angeles when he is contacted by his father who he has not seen in years, and does not want to see so he refuses his father's request to see him. So his father ends up getting him fired from his job due to an undisclosed criminal record, which he got as a result of his father, and his relationship with his girlfriend breaks up. Reluctantly he goes to see his father in Atlantic city where he still lives like a conman finding ways to live a comfortable life paying little or nothing. His father tells him he has cancer and this sets them off on a road trip in a promotional car with advertising all over it, getting free birthday dinners at restaurants due to a collection of fake IDs his father has, and staying the night in demos and open houses they find via real estate listings. His father is still a conman, and this makes Flynn wonder if he is trying to con his way into his heart while the two try to reconnect with the past and present together.

$5 a Day is part comedy, part drama and part road movie, and all a different kind of movie. Christopher Walken is naturally great in a role again, this time playing a meddlesome father who seems to be so caught up in his conning and scheming that it may well be the only way he knows how to show love too. Alessandro Nivola as his son strikes the right cord of being annoyed, pissed off, and yet has a begrudging love for a man he is never sure is conning him or not.

This movie provides laughs and tears. The ending, without giving anything away, is so appropriate for how we have come to know these two men and will leave you wiping a tear while having a good laugh at the same time. Walken may be pulling cons in the movie but the movie is no con job, but the genuine article.

My Rating: 4 Fingers.

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Movie Review: The Quick and the Dead (1995)

The Quick and the Dead (1995) - USA - Western - Rated R

Directed by Sam Raimi

Starring Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman, Russell Crowe, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobin Bell, Keith David, Lance Henriksen, Pat Hingle, Gary Sinise

A mix of spaghetti western and cartoonish action does not gel well but it is hard not to look.

A female, and sexy as hell, gunslinger enters a shooting contest in a small shanty town run by a corrupt mayor. She has a past agenda with this mayor who was, and still is, a criminal, that he does not know about while he has an agenda with a minister who used to ride with him as a criminal but has since mended his ways and given up gunfighting. The mayor has something to prove with the minister, a young gunslinger is out to get the respect of the mayor whom he believes is his father, and the woman is out to kill the mayor for a past criminal activity while the town is filled with gunslingers out to win a prize in a last man standing shooting contest.

For me the biggest failure of The Quick and the Dead was in trying to contemporize it into something more modern. It has a plot, barely, from any average spaghetti western, but then throw in gunfighting scenes and action that would be more at home in a cartoon, or perhaps in Army of Darkness or Evil Dead 2, and they do not fit well together. They are actually rather grating together as the story is dreary and tries to be serious while the absurd action has, for example, someone not realizing they've been shot until they see the sun shining a spot in their own shadow through the lethal buttlet hole in their chest.

Despite elements of this film being like fingernails on a chalkboard, they do successfully tell a somewhat compelling if basic story, and the action does keep the movie mostly moving enough to distract one from its flaws. It's kind of like a car wreck that you can't help looking at.

My Rating: 3 Fingers. I really can't recommend it, but it still is entertaining enough to pass the time.

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