Recently I signed up to one of those online DVD rental sites. I got the
first month free and even after that you pay a fixed amount to get as many
DVDs as you can watch and return in a reasonable time (practically
speaking that's probably about 10-15/month max). Nevertheless with a
deal like this you tend to feel that the price of any individual DVD is
negligible.

Which I mention in an attempt, if it were needed, to excuse my renting
of the movie Cool Money. Not that I really need to excuse it because I
am a Buffy fan after all and Cool Money stars James Marsters and the
curiosity value should be enough justification. Maybe it's that this
movie is so embarrassingly bad that I feel I need an excuse.

But anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. I did watch it - twice so far -
and what follows is my review of same.

(spoilers below)

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Cool Money is a story about a jewel thief named Bobby Comfort who gets
out of jail and meets Sammy Nalo, ex-hitman with a murky past, who has
an idea for robbing various New York hotels. After some persuasion they
team up and the film follows their mixed success in a number of these
robberies. It kinda wants to be a low-budget Ocean's Eleven - Cool Money
is a crap title but then I guess Comfort's Three (there's a 3rd member
of the regular gang) isn't much better I guess ;)

My first impression of Cool Money is that it's a low budget movie and it
shows. I suspected that it was straight-to-DVD but have since learned it
was made-for-TV and presumably only got a DVD release because the
die-hard JM fans will probably buy/rent it. After watching it for the
first time my feeling was that there was a lack of talent in virtually
all areas - in the writing the dialogue is cliched and the story
confused and meandering, in the acting the two central performances
aside we go from mediocre to downright comical, the direction is
lack-lustre, the shots are boring and predictable, the music is either
bland or annoying. Yet, having said all that, when watching it a second
time I did notice some glimmers - a nice bit of dialogue here, an
interesting camera angle there, the occasional piece of music that
actually supported the mood of the scene rather than destroy it - but
they were glimmers and not enough ultimately to rescue the movie.

As I say the movie's strongest asset was the two central performances.
James, and the other lead John Cassini made a valiant effort with what
they have but the script doesn't give them much to work with. James in
particular - who I've always thought was a good actor not a great one
(he makes up for a lot with his considerable charisma) - creates a
character that you care about and root for. Whilst I thought Cassini
wasn't quite as good there was some chemistry between the two and you
did believe there was an uneasy friendship underlying the more pragmatic
partners in crime relationship. Something I'd have liked to have seen
explored more.

I've said this movie fails in most areas but if I had to say what the
biggest problem is I'd say it was the story-arc or rather noticeable
lack of one. If the story was strong I think we'd forgive a lot of the
other shortcomings. Basically the story you have is that Comfort teams
up with Nalo, pull off a series of robberies and then because they're
almost caught, stop. There's no real journey that the characters go on.
So what you have is one-thing-happening-after-another-and-then-stop
rather than beginning, middle and end. Perhaps because of this the
film's 90 minutes really drag.

There are in fact a lot of story threads in there
- Bobby's relationship with his wife who wants him to go straight but
  likes what the money brings
- his relationship with Sammy who comes from a tougher, mob, criminal
  background
- his rivalry with a cousin in the police, both for his wife's affections
  and in terms of being caught.
- and various other bits that look like they're going to be significant
  but are only details of the various robberies.

Perhaps if the central story was more well-defined than these could be
interesting sub-plots but as it is they feel like pointless meanderings.
Worse than pointless they're frustrating when you actually become
interested in following some new character's story only to have it cut
short because it was only ever, in effect, background colour to the main
plot.

It's kind of a mess. I suspect the reason for this was those fateful
words 'based on a true story' However I think some one really needed to
sit down and figure out what the spine of the story was, picking one of
the threads above perhaps, and re-write basing everything around that,
being ruthlessly indifferent to factual accuracy. I think I'd reduce the
number of both robberies and characters. Less robberies to focus the
story more and less characters because in such a low-budget film finding
good actors was clearly a challenge even for the major roles. A few less
embarrassingly bad performances would have been no bad thing.

As for the story I'd have chosen the element that I think works best,
and also plays to the strengths you have (i.e. JM and JC's acting),
which is the relationship between the two main thieves. At the beginning
of the movie Comfort doesn't know Nalo at all. He's persuaded to work
with him but even though it brings success it's clear that he doesn't
know how much to trust him but he starts to despite himself, and even
begins to like him. At the end Nalo's past threatens to re-surface and
there was potential for Comfort discovering just how different he and
Nalo are - Nalo's come from an altogether nastier and harsher world and
I think Comfort discovering that that's who Nalo is once he's already
come to like and respect the guy could have provided some interesting
conflict.

As things stand that theme's in there but it's a little buried and mixed
in with the other stuff.

I couldn't recommend this to anyone other than a hardcore JM fan or
someone who wants to see it for curiosity value. Or perhaps as a study
of what not to do in a low-budget movie.

2/10 - mostly for JM's performance and the glimmers.

-- 
Shuggie

blog: http://www.livejournal.com/users/shuggie/

Those DVD rental sites are great for watching Joss stuff for free!

I saw the whole Firefly series for free through this site -
http://www.rabid.oneuk.com/dvd.html if you hop offers it's easy to get
a few months worth of DVD rentals free in the UK. Nice extras on
Firefly too, and watching that made Serenity make more sense.

"Shuggie"  wrote in message 
news:ta0j83-a39.ln1@ID-256697.user.uni-berlin.de...
> Recently I signed up to one of those online DVD rental sites. I got the
> first month free and even after that you pay a fixed amount to get as many
> DVDs as you can watch and return in a reasonable time (practically
> speaking that's probably about 10-15/month max). Nevertheless with a
> deal like this you tend to feel that the price of any individual DVD is
> negligible.
>
> Which I mention in an attempt, if it were needed, to excuse my renting
> of the movie Cool Money. Not that I really need to excuse it because I
> am a Buffy fan after all and Cool Money stars James Marsters and the
> curiosity value should be enough justification. Maybe it's that this
> movie is so embarrassingly bad that I feel I need an excuse.
>
> But anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. I did watch it - twice so far -
> and what follows is my review of same.
>
> (spoilers below)

oh well your lucky you could write that much about it.  You should see the 
pathetic mess of a movie Amber Benson made using lots of Buffy/Angel cast 
members.  I think it was called Chance or something like that.  God awful I 
tell you....I could barely make it through and the only people selling it 
were her own website for like $300 a disk or something ridiculous...