Everybody loves a terrific automobile chase film. Heck, everybody loves a reasonably good automobile chase film. Even a automobile chase film that’s merely above common has common enchantment. “Eenie Meanie,” the characteristic debut from author/director Shawn Simmons (“Wayne”), is making an attempt to be nice. Usually it’s good. Principally it’s received common enchantment.
Samara Weaving, one of many nice film stars Hollywood hasn’t discovered the way to flip right into a star but, performs Edith. She’s an ace getaway driver, ever since she was a teen, however she’s making an attempt to straighten up and fly proper. She’s going to school. She works at a financial institution. The one drawback is her ex-boyfriend John (Karl Glusman). He’s a drug addict with impulse management points and he can’t keep out of hassle. Edith can relate: She’s hooked on John, and may’t resist the urge to run again to him. Regardless of how badly he ruins her life.
Simply when Edith thought she was lastly over him, a pair months after their final ill-advised fling, she finds out she’s pregnant. When she tries to inform John he’s getting tortured by gun-toting goons, in order that they abscond in a high-speed chase. It seems John has, for the umpteenth time, carried out one thing extraordinarily chaotic. Now he owes thousands and thousands of {dollars} to their previous crime boss, Nico (Andy Garcia), who’d seem to be a reasonably good man if he didn’t wish to take away John’s skeleton from his physique.
Then once more, now that we all know John, we are able to relate. John is a rubbish hearth in human pores and skin. Whereas no person can totally decode the quantum mechanics of the human coronary heart, for lots of “Eenie Meanie” we do not know what Edith sees on this jerk. He can’t even wait in a automobile for half-hour with out ditching the best job on the planet and beginning a bar brawl. John’s actively ruining Edith’s life in numerous methods. He’s not unattractive, truthful sufficient, and there’s a pet canine attraction to his cluelessness, however we’re not speaking a couple of man who’s received potential and hasn’t utilized himself but. John will get individuals killed, on a regular basis, on goal and accidentally, and he’s in all probability going to get Edith killed too if she lets him.
Sooner or later Simmons appears to understand we do not know what Edith sees in John, so he offers her a speech to clarify what he means to her, and impressively, we lastly get it. We perceive why she’s loyal. We perceive why she doesn’t need him useless. We simply don’t perceive why she desires him round.
“Eenie Meanie” is a relationship film, a talky and quippy movie about individuals who love one another however haven’t discovered that love doesn’t remedy all issues. Typically love is the issue. Samara Weaving and Karl Glusman are plausible as individuals who in all probability have good hearts, however haven’t discovered good methods to make use of them. They carry the emotional weight of Shawn Simmons’ movie on their succesful shoulders.
However it’s additionally against the law movie, and it’s not a very memorable one. The one solution to save John’s life is — naturally — to drag an enormous on line casino heist, and — naturally — it includes driving a muscle automobile via the constructing. The heist will get deliberate the best way heists all the time get deliberate. The automobile chases, though there aren’t lots of them, are nifty. The climactic chase features a chaos aspect which, frankly, is so unconventional and thrilling I’m stunned we haven’t seen it carried out earlier than in lots of different movies. It hints that possibly, a number of drafts down the road (or a number of drafts again, if the event course of received in the best way) there was a model of “Eenie Meanie” that may have had a number of extra tips up its sleeve.
Shawn Simmons’ screenplay strives, in each scene, to offer each character snappy dialogue within the post-“Pulp Fiction” mould. However the chatter fades right into a background rapidly. It’s by no means fairly sensible sufficient or humorous sufficient to raise this materials. What makes “Eenie Meanie” work, which it principally does (to at least one diploma of one other), is its sincerity. When the heist runs right into a roadblock, and Edith’s backup plan reveals they modified their life round and left the enterprise, that’s not a second for our hero to panic as a result of she will’t remedy an issue. It’s a second for introspection as a result of, wait a minute, why does no person in Edith’s life love her sufficient to alter too?
“Eenie Meanie” performs like an honest adaptation of an unpublished Elmore Leonard novel. Even the title seems to be prefer it needs to be on a spinner rack subsequent to “Freaky Deaky” and “Rum Punch.” Shawn Simmons can’t fairly nail that easygoing patois. His pages and pages of dialogue come throughout mannered and arch. However he’s received an amusing solid of characters to work with, and he’s thought them out with extra psychological depth than lots of related crime movies.
And whereas this automobile chase film would have benefitted from extra automobile chases, what we get is rousing and, dare I say it, “cool.” However it’s comparatively simple to be cool. Anybody can provide a film glitz. The bandits in “Eenie Meanie” wanted greater than swag in the event that they needed to be actually out of sight.
