2011 drama
Rating: 8/20
Plot: Four masked thugs commit the titular crime, breaking into the Millers’ home in search of cash and diamonds. The patriarch of the family pleads with his captives as they all try to survive.
This movie broke a record previously held by From Justin to Kelly, a movie that I haven’t seen. I know one thing though. If your movie is breaking records previously held by From Justin to Kelly, your movie probably has some problems. This broke that movie’s record for fastest theater-to-video release. It cost around 35 million dollars to make and made about 25 thousand dollars in theaters. I’m not really all that good with money, but I’m pretty sure that’s what you’d call in the business a total disaster. This is a movie that gets lost in its own twists and turns, and I can’t imagine some of these actors and actresses making it through the entire filming without saying, “Wait a second. Are you serious about this one?” at least two or three times. Robbers giving sob stories about a mother dying of renal failure. This whole thing about one of the criminal siblings not taking his medicine. Silly infidelity claims. The daughter’s brilliant idea about how to get some cash. A lack of money and then a bunch of money. This is really stupid stuff, and it’s all so poorly written that it barely makes sense at all beyond the simple structure of a rich family being robbed. This is the type of movie where “I will put a hole in you!” is the type of line that is good enough to use multiple times. The writing doesn’t help the performances much at all. Birthday Boy Nic Cage might be America’s finest actor, but as has been established previously on this blog, he’s really pretty terrible a lot of the time. I think the formula is pretty simple. If you take Cage and give him a borderline-to-stupendously-insane character, he’ll nail it and give a performance that will thrill you. If you take Cage and give him a character who’s supposed to be normal, he can’t do it. “Normal” is out of his range. Here, he shows fear by stuttering and getting phlegmy. He’s added a sniffing thing to his repertoire. I think his character’s supposed to be a little nerdy, but he gets to raise his voice and curse a lot which makes me wonder if he really wanted to be a tough guy. Lines like an angry “You did it, kid!” and an angrier “You shit fucking animals!” made me assume that he was allowed to improvise a little. Oh, Nic. The tough/nerdy contrast might be the result of Cage deciding he didn’t want to be the sniveling victim in this and wanted to be one of the bad guys instead. Apparently, he actually left the film briefly before realizing he still had comic books to buy and needed the money. The best Cage moment in this is when he whispers, “I need hugs!” to his family while talking to somebody else on the phone. Man, is that creepy. Nicole Kidman plays scared a little more naturally, probably because she was married to Tom Cruise for so long. She looks incredible in this, and there are more than a few shots of her bare feet. If I ever decide to watch this movie again in slow motion, it will be because of her. The bad guy who talks the most is played by Ben Mendelsohn might be the best, but the character doesn’t make any sense at all. Some kid named Nico Tortorella plays another rich teenager at a party scene that should have been cut. Writer Karl Gajdusek or director Joel Schumacher should have probably made a trip to the mall and asked if teenagers actually say things like “Oh yeah, it’s all kool-aid” before filming that scene. Of course, it seems obvious that nobody involved in this was all that interested in a second draft.
