Today I’m looking at a pair of crime movies adapted from books by two of my favorite authors. I almost said “recent crime movies” because you know how time is, but it turns out one is more than five years old and the other is more than ten. It’s just that I put them off forever because I was afraid I was going to hate them. It turns out they’re both pretty well made movies, but yeah, I don’t think they have the spark I’m looking for.
LIFE OF CRIME (2013) is the adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s The Switch, about the time Ordell Robbie (Yasiin Bey, 16 BLOCKS) and Louis Gara (John Hawkes, NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW) kidnapped a rich guy’s wife. These are of course the characters he later returned to in Rum Punch, which was turned into JACKIE BROWN, so this has the novelty/pressure of being a sort-of prequel to a crime movie classic from a modern master, which I think most of us agree is either the best or second best Leonard adaptation ever. Good luck, writer/director Daniel Schechter (SUPPORTING CHARACTERS) living up to that.
Obviously he didn’t knock it out of the park, or you would’ve heard about it. Though I’d say it’s more on point tonally and ‘70s-period-wise than the movie of FREAKY DEAKY, it’s overall less fun. But I guess I just like this kinda stuff enough that I found it somewhat interesting. (read the rest of this shit…)
For several years Spike Lee talked about doing a James Brown biopic starring Wesley Snipes. This was fairly recently, like while Wesley was locked up. Man, I couldn’t quite picture what that would be like, and I really wanted to find out. But I figured even if Wesley could pull off the role I wasn’t sure a movie about James Brown could ever work. Would a movie really be able to show his incredible genius without toning down what a horrible person he was?
