It’s tough to get a handle on this. It isn’t a thriller. It’s not a comedy, at least not an out-and-out comedy. It’s more of a light-hearted drama… a light-hearted drama that deals with a kidnapping that involves a neo Nazi, that is. Even though writer-director Daniel Schechter sets up his oddball story well, he doesn’t give it the welly, opting instead for a dryness in tone.
Adapted from Elmore Leonard’s The Switch, Mos Def and John Hawkes are penny-ante criminals eking out a living on the streets of Detroit in 1978. Their next gig is to snatch Aniston’s trophy wife and hold her hostage until husband Tim Robbins, whom they know has funnelled money from dodgy developments into secret holdings, pays a million dollars into a specified account.
That’s pretty straightforward, but here comes the fun, overcomplicated Elmore Leonardisms: the only person willing to house the panicky Aniston is a Nazi (Mark Boone Junior), who doesn’t take too kindly been around Def’s ‘type’; unbeknownst to Def and Hawkes; while Robbins has filed for divorce because he’s bedding the loony maneater Isla Fischer and has no interest in seeing Aniston again; and Aniston is half-thinking of having an affair with Will Forte’s emasculated goof who just happens to turn up at Aniston’s the morning Def and Hawkes put their plan into action…
The cast look unsure as to how to play their characters and inconsistency seeps in: Fischer and Robbins and Forte (Forte’s cowardly mannerisms the standout) are definitely in a comedy, but Hawkes and Aniston are in a drama (there’s a romantic connection between the two) and Def is in a thriller. While each genre works in its own right, the comedy scenes especially, flitting back and forth is confusing - it’s tough to know what Schechter wants you to feel at any given moment.
What it manages to do is keep interest levels high throughout despite the curiously dry tone and pull off a tiger kidnapping plot without it being like any other movie that attempted same (it’s not reminiscent of the blackly comic Fargo, the edgy The Disappearance of Alice Creed, or the batty Ruthless People), which is a feat in itself.
