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Life of Crime: Black comedy with grey areas

Elmore Leonard's novel The Switch has been adapted for the screen as Life of Crime by director Daniel Schechter. It is not in the same league as Jackie Brown or Get Shorty. Attempted as a black comedy, it is not black enough (one lead actor being black notwithstanding) nor is it comic enough (some lines and situations are admittedly funny).

In the late 70s, the wife (Jennifer Aniston) of a corrupt real estate developer (Tim Robbins) is kidnapped by two common criminals (Yasiin Bey and John Hawkes) while he is away in another city, on a rendezvous with his girl-friend (Isa Fisher). The crooks intend to extort a huge ransom from him for her return. To add weight to their demand, they obtain inside information about his crooked business and off-shore accounts, and threaten him with dire consequences if he does not play ball. But the husband, who has already filed a divorce petition, decides he'd actually rather not pay the ransom to get back his wife, setting off a sequence of double crosses and plot twists.

Chances were slim that Daniel Schechter, a huge Leonard fan, would ever be able to make Life of Crime. Even so, he went ahead and wrote a draft in eight days, entirely as a speculative exercise. He said, "The book was so easy to adapt, I doubt I'll ever have that good an experience again." (Well, he’ll have to do a much better job the next time, if there one). Schechter sent his draft to Michael Siegel, Leonard's manager, who was impressed enough to gave permission to start pulling together financing. Schechter joined forces with producer, and Quentin Tarantino confidant, Lee Stollman.

The first actor to sign-on was Yasiin Bey, known to music fans as Mos Def. The 40-year-old, who was born Dante Terrell Smith, grew up in Brooklyn. You might have seen him in The Italian Job (2003) and in the 2005 film adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Smith started to use the name Yasiin Bey after he performed the Haj, in 1998. He now lives in South Africa.

Playing the part of  Melanie, a classic Cosmo girl, Isla Fisher was cast after Schechter saw her in Bachelorette (2012). John Hawkes (52, Winter’s Bone, 2010, Sessions 2012), who rates Malcolm McDowell’s performance as a villain in A Clockwork Orange as outstanding and wishes he had done a role like that of Ray Liotta in Something Wild, came on to be the second villain in the team. Will Forte (Saturday Night Live) was fresh from his anything-but-comedy role in Nebraska when he was cast as Marshall Taylor, whose attempt at an extra-marital fling proves not only abortive but almost injurious. Somebody suggested Jennifer Aniston’s name to play Mickey and Tim Robbins (56, Mystic River--2003, Cinema Verite—2011) came on board to be her husband, Frank.

For decades, Elmore Leonard's novels--3:10 to Yuma, Jackie Brown, and Get Shorty--have been adapted into some of Hollywood's most thrilling movies. Leonard felt the worst two films he'd ever seen were adaptations of his 1969 novel, The Big Bounce, starring Ryan O'Neal in '69 and Owen Wilson in 2004. Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown –from his 1992 novel Rum Punch--was the truest he'd seen. He told a radio host, "My books are dialogue heavy, which makes them easy to adapt to screenplays.” Unfortunately, Life of Crime may not count among the best that made it to the screen. 87 year-old Lawrence passed away in August 2013, just as Schechter was giving finishing touches to the film, which took nearly six years to reach the screen.

Schechter says that he wrote one original scene not in the novel, an encounter between Marshall (Will Forte) and Richard (Mark Boone Junior) outside Mickey's house. Schechter began his career as a writer and editor. His previous movie, Supporting Characters, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2012, was made for $50,000. He is currently writing an adaptation of The Job, a 2008 novel by Irene Dische.

If he added only one scene to the novel, then it must be said that either director Daniel Schechter has failed in converting the book into a cohesive screenplay, or the novel itself lacks elements that would make it compelling viewing. Long pauses, little or nothing happening in several scenes, heavily accented dialogue that can be understood only in parts (another case for sub-titling American films in English), a heroine who does nothing for most of the time (waste of Aniston), a climax that comes too suddenly and too conveniently, entire scenes that bring out one bit of information each, unimaginative cuts, and so on.

The character of the Jews and blacks hating Hitler cultist is interesting, and the reason for most of the enjoyable black comedy. Some of the one-liners are hilarious, especially one that is Schechter’s favourite: Yasiin Bey, on seeing Aniston getting shocked at discovering that Mark Boone Junior is a Hitler cultist and has Nazi paraphernalia all over his house,  “What? Don't you care about history?” Performances are average on the whole. More was expected of Tom Robbins, Will Forte and Mark Boone Jr. Less was to be extracted from Yasiin Bey. John Hawkes’ looks and personality are incongruous. Isla Fisher is a good piece of casting.

Plot-wise, the twists are good, but one finds that many opportunities to turn the black comedy into loud guffaws are consciously eschewed. The angle of the husband not being interested in paying a ransom to get his wife back, which is the raison d’être of this story, is a joke I am sure many of us have heard at least 46 years ago. Hey, 46 years ago it was 1978, wasn’t it? Guess it all began with The Switch. Another nugget? Jennifer Aniston starred in a film called The Switch (2010), which was a romantic comedy and had nothing to do with Leonard’s story. Life of Crime, which is an odd title that does not quite resonate with the plot, has been described as a prequel of sorts to Jackie Brown. Do we have a brown comedy on the anvil?

Rating: **

P.S.: With as many 26 producers coming together to fund this film, are we looking at crowd funding as the next big ‘in-thing’?

1.      Ashok Amritraj   ... producer 

2.      Wendy Benge   ... co-producer 

3.      Charles Sauveur Bonan   ... executive producer 

4.      Joe D'Angerio   ... associate producer 

5.      Elizabeth Destro   ... producer 

6.      James Garavente   ... executive producer 

7.      Ellen Goldsmith-Vein   ... producer 

8.      Christopher Herghelegiu   ... executive producer 

9.      Aleen Keshishian   ... executive producer 

10.  Jordan Kessler   ... producer 

11.  Larry Ladove   ... executive producer 

12.  Tracey Landon   ... line producer 

13.  Kim Leadford   ... executive producer 

14.  Elmore Leonard   ... executive producer 

15.  Bryan Mansour   ... executive producer 

16.  Daniel McCarney   ... associate producer 

17.  Tara Moross   ... associate producer 

18.  Tim Nye   ... executive producer 

19.  Jacob Pechenik   ... executive producer 

20.  Peter Pietrangeli   ... co-producer 

21.  Jennifer Prediger   ... associate producer 

22.  Ralph Rossini   ... associate producer 

23.  Michael Siegel   ... producer 

24.  Lee Stollman   ... producer 

25.  Kim Wolf   ... consulting producer 

26.  Francesca Zappitelli   ... co-executive producer 

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnaI-w8h8Ls