While he might pay lip service to the notion that the idea of marrying noir mystique with action movie stylings was something that appealed to him, star Thomas Jane is surely glad that on the back of his hit HBO series Hung, his stock has now risen to the point where he will no longer have to turn out of bed for schlock like this to pay the bills (at least not in the short term anyway). An overcooked 'bring me that suitcase' thriller complete with kingpins and molls, but stopping just short of feather boas and pencil mustaches.
We're going to be generous to Aussie director Russell Mulcahy and say that the noir elements are 'conceptual' in nature and the continuity errors are deliberately ironic. We're struggling to come up with another explanation as to why a helmer with Mulcahy's experience would go to the trouble of decking everyone out in `50's garb and then have them stand in front of a microwave beyond sheer incompetence. Clearly journeyman scripter Mark Hosack is shooting for the Coen's skewed taked on Dashiell Hammett by way of Tarantino-esque violence.
What he has in fact delivered is a paper thin crime caper built on gumshoe slang and bar stool philosophy ("when you're dead, you tend to stay that way.") that takes itself just a little too seriously. It's the kind of low rent, motel room fare that has characters called Eddie the Cheese, Frankie the Crooner. The kind of shallow tosh where giving Ving Rhames knuckle-for-hire an off-screen sickly spouse and a mountain of medical bills passes for complexity. The tagline for the DVD reads "His name is Malone, and he is one tough dick."
Jane stars as the titular doomed schmo who in taking some ultra-violent revenge on the people who murdered his family has cooked up a mystique as a man unkillable. Having gunned his way into possession of a briefcase said to contain the true meaning of love, Malone becomes the target of local kingpin Whitmore, who blackmails sultry femme fetale Evelyn (an empty Elsa Pataky) into double crossing Malone and retrieving the case for him.
What becomes clear is that hyper-stylized simply doesn't work with such a run-of-the-mill, hackneyed script as a motor. The shootouts are bloody to the point of cartoonish, but the dialogue is excruciating and the performances either flat, or pantomime. As disfigured, unhinged firebug, Matchstick, Doug Hutchison does an uncanny impersonation of Heath Ledger's Joker, right down to an overblown story over how he got his scars. Jane fares somewhat better and, much like Harrison Ford in Star Wars, seems to comprehend that there is something patently absurd about everything going on around him, but even his knowing performance and solid comic timing can't prevent this from devolving into the kind of wince-inducing mess that you actually forget while you're watching it. The closing caption of "To be continued..." suggests Malone will return. Somehow, we doubt Thomas Jane will.
DVD Extras
A series of brief on-set interviews with stars Thomas Jane, Elsa Pataky, and Doug Hutchison, who one-by-one explain how the initial concept intrigued them, followed by an odd sigh of resignation as the realization of the disconnect between that concept and the low-rent reality in which they find themselves finally dawns.
"Give 'Em Hell Malone" is on sale January 25, 2010 and is rated R. Crime-Thriller. Directed by Russell Mulcahy. Written by Mark Hosack. Starring Doug Hutchison, Elsa Pataky, Lelend Orser, Thomas Jane, Ving Rhames.
