DVD Review: The Man
Friday February 10, 2006 • Howard Tayler
I rented The Man this evening, and just now finished watching the movie, and then the blooper reel. The verdict? Don't bother. The movie was amusing, but neither laugh-out-loud funny nor edge-of-the-seat exciting. And the blooper reel was downright disappointing. The film had SERIOUS potential: Samuel L. Jackson and Eugene Levy, in a "buddy-cop/48 hours" scenario? It could have been "Abbott & Costello in Pulp Fiction." But it wasn't. Synopsis: Out-of-town dentist Andy (Eugene Levy) accidentally ends up as the contact between gun runners and Agent Van (Samuel L. Jackson) of the DEA/BATF. Van abducts Andy and coerces him into helping set up the gun runners. Meanwhile Internal Affairs is convinced that Van is dirty, and everybody except Van is convinced that Andy is actually an international smuggler (thanks to this little customs incident in Turkey). See the potential there? Mostly it felt contrived, but not contrived quite far enough... like, if you're going to do an outrageous situation set-up for a sketch, you then need to deliver the actual SKETCH. You can't just have the actors walk through it as if they're reacting to a REAL situation. Maybe someday someone will marry the high-comedic, tight dialog style of Abbott & Costello's sketches with the cinematic style of Quentin Tarantino. Costello: What am I putting on third? Abbott: No. What is on second. Costello: You don't want who on second? Abbott: Who is on first. Costello: I don't know. Samuel L. Jackson: CHEESE ROYALE!
Okay, maybe not.
