Elmore Leonard is usually a sure thing at the movies. His deliciously sneaky and sly style of writing novels makes for equally clever movies like Get Shorty and Out of Sight. Although he may have had some slower periods in his life, a bit of a writer's block, his books always entertain, as do most of the movies that are made from them.
Yet The Big Bounce is no more than an amiable but instantly forgettable B-movie masquerading as something more.
Owen Wilson plays Jack Ryan (not that one), a drifter with some black marks on his record. He's landed in Hawaii and is working on a construction site when he gets fired for hitting his foreman in the jaw with an aluminum bat. This catches the attention of the district judge Walter Crewes (Morgan Freeman), who makes Jack his new hotel janitor.
On his off days, Jack steals wallets, money and other lovely stuff (as a hobby, I guess). One day, he meets Nancy (Sara Foster), the mistress of both Jack's ex-boss Ray Ritchie (Gary Sinise) and Bob Jr. (Charlie Sheen).
Although she gets around (it's not hard to see why), she seems most attracted to Jack, an "unfortunate criminal type" who she would love to just eat for breakfast. She gives Jack the chance of a lifetime: scam $200,000 from Ritchie and become a very rich man very quick.
This is the groundwork for the plot of the movie, but it's based on a Leonard novel, so there's tons of double- and triple-crosses to be had here. While all of the double-dealing is going on, we're getting a twisted romance between Jack and Nancy, two people who just might be right for each other, if it wasn't for everyone else they knew, and for the stealing.
I can't say that the inherent problem lies with the novel itself, having never read it. Maybe there was too much story to be crammed into 90 minutes of film. One problem is this: padding.
Hawaii is a beautiful place. I can only assume this because of what I see in movies, television, and pictures. I already knew that Hawaii is beautiful, but director George Armitage (Grosse Pointe Blank and Miami Blues) doesn't realize this.
It has been made mention of, by Leonard himself in interviews, that there's an oddity throughout the movie: almost every time a conversation ends, it is followed with a transitional shot of people surfing. This doesn't just happen for a couple of seconds; two or three of these shots take nearly 30 seconds. Why? Is the movie that short? It's not like the surfing has anything at all to do with anything in the movie.
The fault may lie with writer Sebastian Gutierrez (Gothika), who doesn't even at least try to pad out the story with something other than surfing. The heist itself doesn't even get more than a second's notice until the final 20 minutes, which is also when The Big Bounce starts to get interesting.
It's certainly not the fault of Owen Wilson. He infuses a level of laid-back enjoyment to the whole thing. If nothing else, he seems to have had fun making this movie; thus, his character seems to really enjoy what he's doing.
Jack is a guy whose brain is going a mile a minute, but is able to look completely the opposite. Foster, in her first big role, is pretty good in the secondary role. At first, I thought she'd just stand around and look beautiful, but then, amazingly, she had a light of mischief appear in her eyes, just right for this troublemaking role.
Morgan Freeman, as always, is very good. It is hard for Freeman not to be good in a movie, even if it is called Dreamcatcher. As the would-be mentor of Jack, he is helpful, fatherly, but a bit sinister, too. One scene of note in the movie (and you'll never see it again in a movie) is when Freeman, Wilson, Willie Nelson and Harry Dean Stanton play dominoes. I have no idea why the other two are Nelson and Stanton, but it's just so hilarious, you have to see it to believe it.
The other roles are essentially cameos. Gary Sinise is onscreen for about five minutes, as is Charlie Sheen and Vinnie Jones as the unlucky foreman; Bebe Neuwirth plays Ritchie's wife, a dumb ditz who may have a surprise up her sleeve; she's good, but also has very little to do.
The Big Bounce isn't a bad movie. I laughed a bit, and when the movie focused on the heist, it was good. This is a movie just better suited for the USA Network or TNT, late at night. How it ever found itself on the silver screen is a wonder to me.
Josh Spiegel is an entertainment reporter for the Web Devil. Reach him at joshua.spiegel@asu.edu.
