Remember back during the nineties when it felt like every third, cinematic release was a cool, quirky crime flick along the lines of Out Of Sight, Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead and Payback? The makers of Eenie Meanie sure do and much in the style of Edgar Wright’s flashy Baby Driver, there’s a real sense of the Elmore Leonards about this zippy release that’s sneaking in under the radar courtesy of Disney+/Hulu. However, while other directors have gone this route before such as the aforementioned Wright, Steven Soderbergh’s Logan Lucky and Shane Black’s The Nice Guys, there doesn’t actually seem to be much desire for the type of street smart, quick witted, crime caper we once used to take for granted.
First time feature director Shawn Simmons is obviously hoping to change all that and with the Deapool guys, Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick in his corner, he just might have a shot. Are they successful or is Eenie Meanie regretfully just stuck with the handbrake on?
Edie Meaney has had something of a shitty life thanks to some pretty rotten upbringing. But while you can’t say that being a teenage getaway driver with a near 100% success record isn’t legitimately impressive, she has since put that life behind her and has gone legit, holding down a steady job and studying in order to better herself. However, there’s always that one chink in the armour that always brings someone down and in Edie’s case, it’s her shockingly unreliable ex-boyfriend that she just can’t seem to shake. In fact, I’d say that “unreliable” is actually putting it nicely and a term that describes John far more accurately would be a complete and total fuck-up.
However, as smart as Edie is, she keeps lapsing like a junkie and when she discovers that she’s three months pregnant thanks to her last relapse, she feels like she has to abandon the carefully cultivated life she’s been working so hard at to see John once again. Needless to say it almost instantaneously proves to be a bad move as barely moments after she enters John’s apartment, she finds him getting beaten and questioned by two thugs about the whereabouts of someone named Leo. After a bit of a skirmish, a chase and brief gunfight, Edie discovers that Leo is a card counter who is employed by local mob boss Nico and John decided to kidnap him on a whim when his get rich quick offer was refused.
It’s this exact, bone-headed, impulse control issues that makes John so dangerous to be around, but when Edie discovers that Nico will have him killed unless he’s paid three million dollars in reparations, she finds herself drawn back into a life of crime.
Roped into staging a daring robbery of that exact amount of money from a casino that’s fronting the cash as first prize in a poker tournament, Edie soon finds that the heist isn’t exactly what it first seemed abd even her formidable driving skills might not be enough to get her boyfriend out of the mound of shit he’s buried himself in.
I really wanted to like Eenie Meany, I really did – mostly because it came with a bunch of issues that truly appealed to me. Firstly, I do legitimately miss those stylish, idiosyncratic crime flicks of the 90s as a lot of modern attempts either fail or get sucked away into the deepest darkest depths of a streaming algorithm due to these kinds of mid-level productions mostly skipping theatres. Another reason for hoping for great things out of this film is that it’s another well deserved leading role for Samara Weaving who plays the titular Eenie Meanie and once again she manages to balance a role that requires her to be both convincingly tough and vulnerable at the same time while also projecting a lead character who is incredibly smart, yet can help but fuck up her life constantly due to the unfathomable hold her ex has over her unfeasibly loyal ass. It’s also nice to see Andy Garcia in another one of these types of movies and his mob boss is a nice throwback to the types of characters the actor would be playing against back in the day.
With all this and a script loaded with snappy banter, colourful characters and humorous incident, you’d think that Eenie Meanie would easily succeed in invoking such past glories like True Romance, however I regret to inform you that the movie didn’t manage to engage with me at all. The main problem (for both me and for Edie) proves to be Karl Glusman’s John who I’m guessing we’re supposed to find irresistibly appealing despite the fact that simply won’t stop doing incredibly stupid things. Actually, I’m not sure what the movie wants us to think if him because all I could see was a character who deserved to get a bullet in the eye after the first scene due to the fact that I despised the character the very second he entered the movie.
Now, I know that this sort of thing happens in real life, but in a movie you have a very fine line to walk, but I just couldn’t move past the fact that the male lead was a selfish, rash, idiot who is supposed to get an eventual pass feom us simply because deep down he truly loves Edie. In fact, things get even worse thanks to a emotional, rather somber finale that I genuinely feel wasn’t earned in the slightest and if the character had caught a stray bit of fire within the first twenty minutes of the film, it still wouldn’t have been quick enough.
It’s a shame, because of they’d managed to make John a more lovable rogue instead of just being a giant man-baby with massive dickhead tendencies, the rest of the film would have worked out just fine. The final heist involving Edie driving her haul through the corridors of a busy casino isn’t exactly going to cause the car chases from Bullitt or Ronin any sleepless nights anytime soon, but it’s more than punchy and slick enough to get the old pulse racing. Similarly there’s a smattering of an eccentric ensemble and unorthodox scenes to keep things nicely perky such as an important meeting held in a room literally full of pornographic pictures or a genuinely cracking joke involving someone trying to run over someone with a car that has anti-collision technology. Also, like any jaunty crime flick worth its salt, there’s also a trunk-full of stirring needle drops and running jokes (“fuck’s sake” seems to be everyone’s go-to catchphrase when things go tits up).
However, despite all the films good points, it most feels like Simmons is just trying to play all the hits of the genre without having much originality to offer himself other than True Romance, but the male lead is a prick. Maybe I could of happily awarded Eenie Meanie three stars if I just could have tolerated the character of John, but not even the proven talents of Samara Weaving could stop me genuinely tutting and rolling my eyes every time he did something stupid.
Eenie Meanie minor faux.
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