January 30, 2004 | So insubstantial
that it practically evaporates while you're watching it, The Big Bounce is
a mild and hazy comic caper in which the actors spend most of their
time traipsing like tourists through swaths of spectacular Hawaiian
scenery. It's easy to imagine that the entire cast and crew flew to
Oahu on a whim, and didn't worry much about coming up with a plot until
they were settled into their hotel rooms. It's every bit as easy to
imagine someone – maybe Owen Wilson,
the laid-back star -- casually offering a suggestion: “Hey, I bought
this paperback in the airport newsstand, why don't we film this ?”
As it turns out, the movie actually is based on a 1969 potboiler by
Elmore Leonard, author of Get Shorty and Out of Sight .
The novel isn't in the same league as Leonard's later, funnier books – indeed,
it was his very first attempt at crime fiction – and you could argue
that screenwriter Sebastian Gutierrez has improved on the original by
adding plot twists and comic business to make his script seem, well,
more like an Elmore Leonard novel. Even so, the movie is so amiably haphazard
as it saunters from scene that you can't help suspecting the actors simply
made things up as they went along.
Owen Wilson once again does his insouciant surfer-dude thing in the
lead role of Jack Ryan. (It's worth noting, by the way, that Leonard
claimed that name for his character long before Tom Clancy used the moniker
for his C.I.A. hero.) The big difference in The Big Bounce is
that, for once, Wilson really is playing a guy who surfs.
(Trivia buffs, take note: Leonard's novel previously was filmed, quite
badly, back in 1969 with Ryan O'Neal as a tediously glum Jack Ryan.)
To finance his fun in the sun during an extended Hawaiian sojourn, Jack
does construction work for Ray Ritchie (Gary Sinise), a shady real estate
wheeler-dealer who's ignoring protests by locals while building a luxury
resort in Oahu . Early on, however, Jack loses his job after settling
a dispute with a bullying foreman (British footballer-turned-actor Vinnie
Jones) by applying a baseball bat to the other fellow's jaw.
The rough stuff amuses Walter Crewes (a
wily Morgan Freeman), a friendly district judge who hires Jack as handyman
for his not-quite-palatial hotel. Nancy Hayes (Sara Foster), Ritchie's
mistress, also is impressed by Ryan, especially when she learns of
the burglary charges on his arrest record. After teasing Ryan with
her taste for cheap thrills – vandalism,
unlawful entry and other naughty behavior that she describes as “bounces” – she
recruits him in a scheme to liberate $200,00 from Ritchie's hunting-lodge
safe.
Director George Armitage ( Grosse Pointe Blank ) does a reasonably
efficient job of maintaining some semblance of narrative momentum, despite
the telltale signs of last-minute re-editing and restructuring: Abruptly
truncated subplots, scenes that feel radically shortened, prominently
billed actors (especially Sinise and Jones) who make only fleeting appearances.
Overall, The Big Bounce generates a pleasant vibe, due in no
small measure to Wilson , whose ingratiating performance sets the prevailing
mood of off-the-cuff humor and off-the-wall absurdity.