So John Travolta’s ex wife, played by Teri Polo, is moving on and marrying a new guy, played by Vince Vaughan. Travolta’s character is trying to help his son, played by Matt O’Leary, get used to the new step-dad. But then suspicion starts to grow; maybe the new step-dad . . . IS THE VILLAIN IN A THRILLER MOVIE! The movie sprints through the general motions of a Hitchcockian thriller in 89 minutes (including end credits!), barely pausing long enough to, well, do much of anything of any real interest. This movie isn’t exactly terrible, just pretty dull and entirely predictable. The biggest pleasure is Steve Buscemi, who slouches into view at the wedding of Vaughan & Polo, doing his best Harbinger of Doom routine as a Mysterious Figure© from Vaughan’s past. This movie asks nothing of him that you haven’t seen him do a hundred times before, but he brings some life to the proceedings which is very much appreciated since Travolta has decided to sleepwalk through the movie as though the fact that the guy living with his ex-wife and son might be a murderer is, you know, mildly interesting. Teri Polo commits and is actually pretty good; there’s a late scene where she’s (finally) starting to figure out that her new husband isn’t all he seems to be where she’s actually exceptionally good at several emotions. That scene kind of hints at what this movie might have been.
But let’s talk about Vince Vaughan. Oh boy, let’s talk about this character. His character is actually the most interesting, or most potentially interesting, character in the movie. He’s done some bad things, but he’s genuinely trying to start over under a new identity because he wants the cheesy American family. But then the past, as so often happens, crops up in the person of Buscemi’s character and, well, all of that is put in jeopardy. You could make a darn good noir film out of this premise if you made Vaughan’s character the protagonist, not the antagonist. How far, after all, is he willing to go to keep his new “perfect” life? The script gives the character just enough moments to make you wish they’d really explored this element and Vaughan is good in those moments. When he excitedly tells Buscemi’s character that his new wife is pregnant, he’s genuinely proud and as genuinely happy as we see him in the movie. It’s not that he wants to endanger his new wife or step-son; it’s just that he’s being forced to move back into the world of crime in order to try to keep his new normal life. Damn. That’s compelling as ****. Unfortunately, this movie thinks the fact that John Travolta is struggling financially to maintain his boat-building business is more interesting. Spoiler: it’s really not. And the movie is of two minds about Vaughan’s character; it wants to occasionally give him some shading, but most of the time it wants him to be as cartoonish a villain as has ever twirled a mustache and Vaughan is not good in those scenes.
The movie has one really great sequence, a tense car-ride in the rain that climaxes in an act of violence and the disposal of . . . things. It’s beautifully shot and atmospheric. I almost think they spent the first three nights doing this sequence and then were two days behind for the rest of the shoot, because this sequence is pretty meticulous, whereas most of the rest of the film feels rushed. I’d go so far as to say the first third of this movie is . . . pretty good. Not great, but good. Last two-thirds just kind of slowly decline and by the time you get to the most abrupt ending in the history of thrillers, you won’t even mind, because, like the director and cast, you’re ready for this thing to be over. 2 ½ stars.
tl;dr – workmanlike thriller has some pleasures, but is ultimately bland and uninteresting, even if it’s never quite awful. 2 ½ stars.