30 Minutes or Less

The last time that director Ruben Fleischer and actor Jesse Eisenberg teamed up, they brought us the very funny Zombieland. Now they bring us the loopy pitch black comedy, 30 Minutes or Less, which isn't as memorable, but still has some laughs. Well, the first half of the movie does, at least. Eventually, the movie seems to forget that it's a comedy, and exchanges laughs for mindless car chases, explosions and shoot outs. I liked the first half better.

The film has been generating some controversy the past week, due to the similarities between the film's plot, and a real life crime situation that happened back in 2003, when a pizza delivery man named Brian Wells tried to hold up a bank with what he thought was a fake bomb, only to discover it was very real with tragic results. First-time screenwriter Michael Diliberti claims that the incident was not an inspiration for his screenplay, but I'm not really buying it. Regardless, I'm here to review the film itself, not to debate its inspiration. The pizza delivery guy in this movie is Nick (Jesse Eisenberg), a slacker man-child with a passion for action movies and video games, but little else in life. About the only thing going right in his life is that he somehow managed to get a very cute and faithful girlfriend named Kate (Dilshad Vadsaria), who also happens to be the twin sister of his best friend, Chet (Aziz Ansari). Unfortunately, Nick has never told Chet that he's been dating his sister, and when Chet finds out, he doesn't take it well. The two break off their friendship, but are forced to rekindle it when Nick ends up with a bomb strapped to his chest, and Chet is the only guy he knows that he can turn to for help.

Enter our antagonists, dim-witted friends Dwayne (Danny McBride) and Travis (Nick Swardson). They're hapless pool cleaners who are tired of being under the thumb of Dwayne's verbally abusive retired Marine father (Fred Ward). They decide they want to murder the old coot, but don't want to get their hands dirty, so they plan to hire a hitman named Chango (Michael Pena). His fee is $100,000. In order to get the money to pay for the hit, they place a phony pizza delivery order, and when Nick shows up to deliver it, they kidnap him and strap a bomb to his chest, telling him he has 10 hours to rob $100,000 from a local bank, or they'll detonate the bomb. That gives Nick plenty of time to hire Chet's help, tell off his boss, say some words to his girlfriend, pull off the bank heist, and get involved in a number of high speed car chases that are pretty well shot, but get kind of tiresome after a while.

30 Minutes or Less kind of reminded me of July's Horrible Bosses, another adult-targeted comedy about very stupid people trying to pull off a murder. That was a much better movie, because that movie featured likable guys who were dragged in way over their heads, and the comedy built on the fact that nobody knew what they were doing. There are some elements of that here (the actual bank heist gets a couple laughs, due to Nick and Chet's inexperience), but all too often, the movie relies on violence instead of laughs. The obvious question here is why? Why hire such a funny cast, and reduce them to shooting each other and crashing cars? What's sad is that when the actors are allowed to play off each other, there are some laughs to be had. This is a movie that should have been more confident in its talent.

This is a movie that walks a fine line between comedy and cruelty, and it at least manages to stay afloat, unlike last weekend's abysmal and hateful The Change-Up. I was never outright offended by the film, and the characters are really too simple-minded to be hateful. Even the bad guys come across more like 10-year-olds in the body of adults trying to act tough, rather than being genuine threats. The goofy tone of the film helps move things along, as does the film's rapid pace. We're never really given much time to apply much thought to what we're watching. It's only during the film's extended and unnecessarily bloody climax that things started to get a little uncomfortable for me. Fortunately, by that point, the movie is almost over. This is a film that works in bits and pieces, but doesn't work enough for me to recommend it.

With a running time that barely hits 80 minutes, the movie doesn't hang around for long. It will probably take less time for you to forget it once it's done. The best thing that can be said about it is that it's a passable time waster of a movie. Anyone who tries to sell it as being more than that is overselling it.
See the movie times in your area or buy the DVD at Amazon.com!

0 comments