There's always been a certain allure to films with hard-boiled detectives, shady ladies, and colorful bad guys. When you think of such things, names like Marlowe, Spade, Hammett, and Spillaine immediately come to mind. Based on this attraction to stories about characters living on the seedy underbelly of life, I decided to give No Good Deed a try. After all, it's based on a story by the great Dashiell Hammett.
The hero of the film is Jack Friar (Samuel L. Jackson), a diabetic cop with a passion for the cello. While he normally specializes in grand theft auto cases, Jack gets talked into trying to track down his neighbor's missing 15-year-old daughter. While canvassing a seemingly peaceful neighborhood, Jack witnesses an elderly lady fall on her front porch. The woman, known as Mrs. Quarre (Grace Zabriskie), welcomes him inside, and Jack soon finds himself held hostage thanks to a case of mistaken identity.
It's at this point where he meets the movie's little gang of eccentric criminals. First off, there's the aforementioned Mrs. Quarre, which she admits is an alias. Then there's her husband, Mr. Quarre (Josh Ackland), an avid baseball fan and pilot during the Korean War. Erin (Milla Jovovich), a Russian pianist who fell in love with the wrong guy and can't leave. Hoop (Doug Hutchison), the resident psychopath with a hair-trigger temper, and Tyrone (Stellan Skarsgard), the leader of the group and the man that Erin can't seem to get away from.
The criminals are given a cursory amount of character development and then set about pulling off a heist, leaving Jack tied to a chair in the living room. Inevitably, the beautiful Erin is left to guard him, and the plot unfolds with everyone trying his or her best to betray everyone else.
With a cast this good, it's a shame that the acting wasn't better. Jackson is subdued in this movie, which means he scowls more and yells less, but his character is never very compelling. He just sort of drifts along throughout the movie. Hoop seems like a possible high point in the beginning with his unique look and psycho behavior, but he never really progresses beyond a simple thug. And the talents of Skarsgard and Jovovich are on cruise control throughout the film, even though Milla looks stunning in dresses which seem to have been taken from a 40's detective novel.
A lot of this can be blamed on the script, which tries to capture the noir feel of older films but never quite succeeds. They do get in a few lines of snappy dialogue (such as when Tyrone tells Erin, 'You are art. Do not fade.'), but it feels forced amidst all the generic banter.
The heist itself is poorly explained, and I never quite figured out how it was supposed to work (something about turning off the power in the bank and then making numerous fake deposits). In modern movies, we've been conditioned to expect heist scenes to be explained in exacting detail. No Good Deed deals with the bank robbery in a very matter of fact way, and it fails to generate any real tension at all. In fact, the scenes at the bank fall completely flat.
There was another moment which also seemed particularly weak. To access the file with all the accounts, the robbers need a password. A lot is made out of this. When the password is lost, they are forced to try and guess what it is. Amazingly, they get it on the third try. If it was going to be that easy, why make such a big deal out of it in the first place?
You're supposed to care, I suppose, about what happens to these characters. But you won't, because they never evolve past the most basic level of movie development. Granted, each character is given a scene or two, but it just doesn't seem to add up to much. When the bodies start piling up, you're more likely to be looking at your watch than really caring what's taking place on the screen.
No Good Deed wants to be one part hard-boiled homage and one part dark comedy. Unfortunately, it really doesn't do either one of these very well. In the end, it's just an odd little film which seems to have slipped through the cracks. If you're a fan of any of the movie's stars, I would advise you to check out one of their other works. |
| Author: Damien Chambers |
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