Reel Reflections movie review

Bad plot bounces around big screen

In the middle of this cold winter, it would be a nice bit of escapism to see a movie that takes place on the sunny Hawaiian beaches. "The Big Bounce," however, the latest film to be adapted from a novel by author Elmore Leonard ("Get Shorty"), does not grant viewers any winter respite.

Jack Ryan (Owen Wilson, "Behind Enemy Lines") is a small-time thief who's pissed off a lot of the wrong people. He comes to work at a beach resort owned by the same judge (Morgan Freeman, "Bruce Almighty") who kept Jack out of prison when he (Jack) leveled his foreman with a baseball bat.

While at the beach resort, Jack becomes attracted to blond bombshell and beachgoer Nancy (Sara Foster, making her film debut) who is turned on by the criminal type, and wants Ryan to help her steal $200,000 from her sugar daddy, Ray Ritchie (Gary Sinise, "The Human Stain"). Of course, the plot really doesn't develop until the last 30 minutes of the film, at which point it becomes mildly engaging as the overutilized "who's conning who?" theme dominates the plot.

The first hour of the film is spent watching Nancy flirt with Jack, getting him to divulge his criminal side as she convinces him to break into random houses and steal cars. By the time the real plot is revealed, nobody really seems to care; viewer's attention already is lost.

The ending of the film strays far from that of the novel, and feels like it hastily was created. But, the film comes across as lame to both Leonard's readers and the average viewer. Maybe the film's creators thought they could make up for 90 minutes of wasted time by throwing a wrench in at the end. Well, audience members aren't that dumb, and can tell a smart, clever film from one that doesn't go anywhere and then tries to pull a blanket over our heads at the last second and say, "I bet you never saw that coming."

The exceptional cast in the film really goes to waste as the audience seems not to know or care what they're doing in the film. Although Foster is quite fun to look at, she couldn't act her way out of a paper bag.

Wilson is funny in his naive, yet charming, kind of way, and handles the witty lines Leonard bestowed on him with a perfect blend of quiet confidence and ignorance that Leonard's characters have come to be known by. However, his likeability isn't enough to save the film from drowning.

Maybe the moral of the story is that not all Elmore Leonard novels make good movies, or maybe it's that not all models make good actors (Cameron Diaz being the exception of course). Whatever the case, anyone looking to escape the snow and see a movie should skip "The Big Bounce" and bounce over to something like "Big Fish." Or just stay in and play video games for that matter. Isn't that what the winter is for, anyway?