While I was never bored by this film, ultimately it failed to come together in any kind of a compelling fashion. Basically, it's a heist comedy with some really rough dialog and violence added in to make the whole thing seem important or heavy. Despite all the blood and so forth, it ends up being a rather silly buddy comedy. John Cusack fails to give a performance that would generate any great interest or sympathy, and Oliver Platt gives a performance that is awful, studied, and unfunny, pretty much ruining any chance of the film being particularly good. The writing is enough to betray Lara Phillips and Billy Bob Thornton (who seems to do every caper film these days, good or bad) without any help from the actors, because their characters are completely predictable.
I have little else to say here about it. I would have rated it even lower, but I really enjoyed the brief scene with Randy Quaid as a menacing mobster who feels like a loser. He had more character in that 5 minute scene than anybody else in the movie did with much more time. This movie really offers no surprises, and would probably only please someone who had very little experience with caper films. It's like the sickly cousin of "Fargo." Avoid it unless you are a John Cusack completist.
I have little else to say here about it. I would have rated it even lower, but I really enjoyed the brief scene with Randy Quaid as a menacing mobster who feels like a loser. He had more character in that 5 minute scene than anybody else in the movie did with much more time. This movie really offers no surprises, and would probably only please someone who had very little experience with caper films. It's like the sickly cousin of "Fargo." Avoid it unless you are a John Cusack completist.