ItROUGH NOTESgic.
by Jon Dunmore © 24 A


He did the time for a bank robbery he didn't commit. Now that he's out, he's really gonna rob that bank. Nice Concept. Might look implausible if the actors don't tread delicately with utmost conviction. Or unless you can find an actor that stands outside the field of acting altogether and can retain a blank poker face through it all. Enter Keanu Reeves.

He's Henry, a shiftless toll booth operator in Buffalo, suckered into being accessory to a bank robbery and imprisoned, whereupon his cellmates (led by James Caan) urge him to exact recompense for the injustice of his incarceration: when he gets out, commit a real crime to make up for the time he already did unjustly.

HENRY'S CRIME is not flashy in any way; it's an independent movie funded initially by Keanu himself and it plods along interestingly, with lean, expedient direction by Malcolm Venville. Though it's a comedy caper movie, it never becomes frenetic and retains an even keel throughout, much like its lead character, who takes everything with equanamity. He is, after all, The One.

Henry never bats an eyelid when he is arrested; or when his girlfriend (Judy Greer) visits him in jail to tell him she has fallen in love; even when he is victim of a violent Meet Cute being run down in the street by the stunning Vera Farmiga. Nothing seems to reach this guy's nerve endings. Usually I would laugh and/or complain about the lack of acting from Keanu, but in this context, his demeanor fits perfectly. One would have to be quite inured to emotion existing each day in suburban rut, and then to endure jail time. Yet his determination (or whatever you'd call that somnambulistic pseudo-ambition) to rob the very bank he was convicted of robbing indicates SOME kind of moral outrage at the least; an end-of-his-rope attempt to lash out and grab life by the baby-makers.

Didn't Morpheus tell us that The One would bring balance?




, here in an uncharacteristically shrikey role.
coast through on being The One. his even keel is unaffected by anything

You've got to tread that ifne line in not perpetrating a morally reprehensible crime because you don't want to alienate the star of the movie with the audience, yet you want him to humorously, bemusedly come to the conclusion that that may be the only path left for him post-prison.


cell mate James Caan, a "confidence man" not a "con" man (that's too pedestrian) /a lifer - who wants to stay in - puts oin a crazy act every tie he comes up for parole. inthe joint, one of the gguys says to him, plants idea in his head, "you're inocent, you've done the time - you might as well d the crim"

wide - insipide Judy Greer, thoguh well-acted.

keanu underplaying to the point of chlroform / jet lag /

Vera FArmiga in uncharacteristically shrikey role.

stormare excelent as ecentric euro director, pushing pushing pushing to liberate the performances from his actors. ...


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