Don't spend your cash on 'Hard Cash'

The vast majority of movies I watch, I come to cold. If I know anything about them, it comes from reading the blurb on the back of the DVD case, or, rarely, a review on another website or a preview on the DVD itself, which I sometimes watch to decide if I'm actually in the mood for the film in question.

Such was the case with "Hard Cash". I'm a fan of Christian Slater, and I am of course familiar with Val Kilmer and Daryl Hannah, but I knew nothing about the film itself. So, after it sat about a month in my review stack, I stuck it in the DVD player to, at the very least, watch any preview of it that might be included.

And I decided that I had to watch the movie right then, because any flick that's got a midget assassin hiding in a toilet bowl can't be all bad (particularly when it's the midget who played Mini-Me).

But, unfortunately, the midget assassin in the toilet was merely indicative of the turd that this movie turned out to be... and I had been suckered by a well-done promo.


Hard Cash (aka "Run for the Money") (2002)
Starring: Christian Slater, Val Kilmer, Sara Downing and Daryl Hannah
Director: Peter Antonijevic
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

Thomas (Slater), a clever thief working with a gang of morons who manage to pull off a $1.9 million heist. All Thomas wants is to split the money with his partners and flee to lead a better life with his young daughter and girlfriend (Downing). Unfortunately, Thomas and his gang stole marked money that a crooked, mildly insane FBI agent (Kilmer) had already stolen and was having laundered. Now, Thomas has to pull off an impossible job at the behest of the crooked Fed while trying to keep his own criminal associates from killing him and each other.


I love a good heist movie, I love good action films, I love good crime dramas, and I love good comedies. "Hard Cash", a film with a case of severe attention deficit disorder, tries to be all of the above, but fails to be any of the above. It reminded me of a pale imitation of a Donald Westlake novel, except the jokes weren't all that funny and the stakes didn't seem to higher... only more unbelievable and stupid. Worse, the stunts and chases aren't particularly good (and obviously cheaply made... the filmmakers couldn't even bother to make most of the cars they demolished look like anything but the junkers they were) and the heists weren't very suspenseful. In fact, "Hard Cash" does a great job at remaining 100% Tension Free. (In fact, the "teaser heist" at the very beginning of the movie is more interesting than anything that follows.)

The only halfway decent thing about this film is Christian Slater and the character he plays--even Val Kilmer can quite manage to rise above the awful script and character he has to work with. Slater's character is the only one with even the slightest bit of depth in the film, and he is the only one who seems to be doing any acting. (Okay, so he's the same character he is in most movies he's done--he's Christian Slater!--but at least there's SOME range of emotion in his performance. No one else has that.

Save your hard-earned cash for something better than "Hard Cash".

The mystery of Cletis Tout solved

Who Is Cletis Tout? (2002)
Starring: Christian Slater, Tim Allen, Portia de Rossi, and Richard Dreyfuss
Director: Chris Ver Weil
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Master forger Finch (Slater) has made his good his escape from prison, he's got a lead on a hidden stash of diamonds from his partner (Dreyfuss) and his daughter (de Rossi), but there's just one problem. Finch has stolen the identity of a man the mob wants dead, and now they're after him. Can Finch convince hit man Critical Jim (Allen) that he is not who he said he was in time to get the diamonds, the girl, and give the movie a happy ending?


"Who Is Cletis Tout?" is a charming, if forgettable, comedic crime caper. It takes all the standard elements of a film noir drama--a jewel heist, a prison break, mistaken identities, bloodthirsty mobsters, coldblooded hit men, an alluring femme fatale--and turns them all a bit sideways. It all comes together in a pleasing package, but nothing really ever 'wows' the viewer. There are some chuckles, but no real laughs, and the only tension that the movie ever really generates comes at the very end.

Still, the movie is fast-paced and the actors all give great performances. Tim Allen in particular shines as a quirky hit man who is such a movie buff that he strives to shape his life (and when possible, the lives of those around him) into the form a movie. I might even say that it's Allen's character that makes this movie worth watching. His commentary to Finch on the current sorry state of movie making is also dead-on, particularly his lament that most modern movies lack a third act.

(As I post this review, "Who Is Cletis Tout?" is out of print, but it is available for rent from Netflix and other outlets.)

'Hard Rain' is an overlooked action flick

Hard Rain (aka "Flood") (1998)
Starring: Christian Slater, Morgan Freeman, Randy Quaid and Minnie Driver
Director: Mikael Salomon
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

A gang of criminal led by a gentleman thief (Freeman) find their attempt to rob an armored car during a flood evacuation frustrated by a young security guard (Slater) who escapes into the storm with the $3 million dollars it was carrying. As the flood waters rise, the robbers try to corner the guard and retrieve the money... but it isn't until a third party decides to make a bid for the money that things turn really deadly.


"Hard Rain" is part thriller, part disaster movie and all excitement. It's a well-crafted. well-acted film that is suspenseful from beginning to end. Even better, writer Graham Yost shows that he has an understanding of basic storytelling techniques and story structure, something that few people writing action or suspense scripts seem to have any sense for today. (Yost foreshadows just about every element and development in the story well in advance, thus playing fair with the audience and making each plot twist and complication all that more satisfying. Particularly neat is the recurrence of a statue in the town square of the small town that's being flooded that seems like it's just being used to show the audience how rapidly the water is rising, but which later in the film becomes a key element in a some very dramatic moments.)

While Morgan Freeman plays the sort of character he's played in at least two other movies--the aging professional thief who is hoping to score a big heist to retire on--he is perhaps at his most charismatic here, and he plays the sort of bad guy we find ourselves rooting for even if our sympathies lie first and foremost with Christian Slater's heroic, stubborn security guard.

Speaking of Slater, he also gives an excellent performance as perhaps the most likeable and normal character he's ever played. Usually, there's something a little off or quirky about a Christian Slater character, but not so with Tom in this movie. Tom is exactly the sort of guy everyone would want to have a best friend or a brother-in-law.

"Hard Rain" was a box office flop when it was released in 1998--the film cost $70 million to make and only earned $22.4 million worldwide, according to IMDB--which is a shame, because it deserved to do better. In fact, it was such a big flop and the international array of backers who financed this film were soaked more thoroughly than any of the characters in the film.

If you like well-done action movies, or if you're a fan of Christian Slater's equally undeserving of failure television series "My Own Worst Enemy", I encourage you to check this film out.