This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.
Spawn Of the Living Dead
Plot Overview
Early on we are disabused of any notion
that con artists are cute for their cleverness. They're in a dog-eat-dog
world like criminals in a John O'Hara story:
I want to put in a warning to those readers who may still retain an impression of those days and those people that may be charming, but has nothing to do with the truth. Broadway was really not populated by benevolent bookmakers who gave all their money to the Salvation Army, and bootleggers who were always looking around for a paraplegic newsboy who needed surgery, and crapshooters who used their tees and miss-outs—crooked dice—in order to finance a chapel. There is something about the words rogue and rascal that brings a smile to the eyes of people who never spent any time with rogues and rascals. And I have never been able to accept the paradox of the prostitute who was faithful to one man. The big shots and the smallies that I saw—and I saw dozens of them—were unprincipled, sadistic, murderous, bullies; often sexually perverted, diseased, sometimes drug addicts, and stingy. The women were just as bad, except when they were worse. (361-2)
Kelvin Anderson and his sister Isold
made mischief in high school, enough to get him sent home for. After
finishing there they became con artists, notably a broken leg insurance
scam that netted them $20K (with a lot of pain.) Kelvin got sent away
but escaped and went on the lam. No-one has seen him since. Isold
(Julia Stiles) is still listed as the sole beneficiary of his $1 million
life insurance policy. She has returned to the sorry town of Hastings,
Minnesota with a low life husband Fred (Jeremy Renner) in tow and a son
Thor (Alfred Harmsworth.) Fred runs a shady garage. He needs to up his game
and the insurance scams have put them on a slippery slope.
This coffee-and-cakes mobster, he hasn't got enough dough to keep her in bath salts. So he's going to have to get big all of a sudden, and how do you get big in his racket? You know as well as I do. From where he is, you start by killing somebody. That's the only way to make a fast big score. Homicide. (367)For a life insurance scam, the corpse needs to be unidentifiable (“That could be anybody.”) As O'Hara notes;
One man with half his face shot away and curled up in the back of a sedan looks much the same as another man who died in the same circumstances. A man who had been soaked with gasoline as well as stabbed or shot may be —, but I could only guess. (359–60)
Isole makes an ill-advised guess on
the dead man's identity, which will net her the claim money, but insurance
adjustor Abe Holt (Forrest Whitaker) smells a rat and pursues it like
their bulldogs school mascot.
Ideology
The film is framed by disappointments. First, one Mrs. Rodriguez (María Fernández Ache) with her boy (Kharl Anton Leigh) sitting next to her gasps, “After twenty years of payment, this can't be right,” when insurance associate Frank (Peter Coyote) shorts her on her benefit. And near the close Isold likewise complains (“I need that money”) when she doesn't get the big benefit she was expecting. It's like (Prov. 30:15-16) “The horseleach hath two daughters, crying, Give, give. There are three things that are never satisfied, yea, four things say not, It is enough: The grave; and the barren womb; the earth that is not filled with water; and the fire that saith not, It is enough.”
The grave is
never full, people keep on dying. That's what life insurance policies
are for. The Quality Life Insurance Company runs a TV ad asking, “What would happen to
your loved ones if you died? Would they be protected?” It shows
a young couple (Björn Stefánsson & Signy
Kristinsdóttir) cavorting in the park with a side shot of two
old people (Birgir Sigurdsson & Margrót
Élafsdóttir), presumably their dependent relatives,
on a bench.
The barren womb is like to produce more babies for trying. Isold mentions, “It's just that time or the month.” She already had her first unexpectedly. It's the young and the very old who are so dependent (“crying, Give, give.”)
“The earth that is not filled with water” is tillable land, after the water of Noah has receded. Abe accosts one neighbor who is “just trying to get something to grow around here.” She is “trying to squeeze out every drop from this frozen land.” We also need a roof for dry inside work. As it's put in an O'Hara story, “In this weather Goldstein kept the Sunday papers inside. In the summertime the papers were piled on boards in front of the store and you helped yourself, but on a sloppy day like this—rain, snow, gusts of wind—you had to go inside” (350–1). At one point in the movie Isold falls through a rotted roof when it's raining outside.
“The fire that saith not, It is enough.” That is human metabolism, a fire that burns all the time and must be fed. It's amply illustrated when a trashy barmaid Josie (Joanna Scanlan) slow dances with Abe to “It's Cold Outside” from the juke box. Now, there's a woman who could keep a fellow warm at night.
The fuel (food) that somebody has to
work to provide is pictured throughout the picture. First we have,
“Thor, breakfast!” “Your mom's calling.” And
later there's, “You hungry? Let's get you a sandwich, okay?”
At the diner his dad buys him a milk shake. Somebody cleans up the
dishes at home. An elderly couple is served donuts at another diner.
The tension in this movie derives from
necessary care of dependents, with insurance for contingencies. But
the insurance company is “concerned with the bottom line just
like any other business.” What they pay out has to be covered
by what they take in, plus some investment yield, which the way they
do business is like something O'Hara describes, “money,
she knew, [that] had come from shrewd deals involving depletions and
depreciations and dodges” (354.) People hedge their bets,
sometimes murderously so. This insurance company is far from
regulatory scrutiny, and nobody's a saint, except perhaps mothers
at times. Abe concedes, “The house has to pay out every once
in a while; otherwise people would stop gambling.”
Production Values
“” (2005) was directed
by Baltasar Kormákur. It was written by Edward Martin Weinman,
Baltasar Kormákur, and Sissi Kugler. It stars María
Fernández Ache, Kharl Anton Leigh, and Peter Coyote. The actors
are a joy to watch, every last one of them. Forest Whitaker is the
only one who spoke with a pseudo-Minnesota accent, but it's hard enough
figuring out the mysteries of who's who that I wasn't worried about
their speech. Whitaker a black man was cast as an insurance investigator,
a part ipso facto engendering suspicion and distrust without anything
added to it. But Minnesotans are a friendly lot, opening their door
to a strange black man staring in the window, and sharing with him
student information from confidential files even after he was discovered
to be looking under false pretexts.
MPAA rated it R for language, some violence and disturbing images. It was filmed in Iceland with a 2nd Unit location of Hastings, Minnesota, USA. It had strong visual imagery. It was filmed in a wide-screen 2.35:1 ratio format. Runtime is 1 hour 38 minutes.
Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation
This is like a Coen Brothers wannabe; theirs are few and far between, so this one might work as a sub for some people. It's quirky but not in a good way for salt-of-the earth Minnesotans. I'm easy to please, so I was able to appreciate it, but more usual fare might be what most people are after.
Movie Ratings
Action factor: Well done action scenes. Suitability For Children: Not Suitable for Children of Any Age. Special effects: Average special effects. Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day. Suspense: Keeps you on the edge of your seat. Overall movie rating: Three and a half stars out of five.
Works Cited
Scripture was quoted from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769. Software.
O'Hara, John. The Cape Cod Lighter. Copyright © 1961, 1962 by John O'Hara. New York: Random House, 1962. Print.
bibles.n7nz.org