Directed by Tamra Davis
Running time 90 mins
Certificate 15
Congratulations, viewer!
You have selected a Fred Ward movie!
This film carries the Fred Ward seal of approval, in that it contains a performance by Fred Ward, star of Tremors, Tremors 2 and Remo: Unarmed And Dangerous. As accepted master of the role of middle-age, grumpy cracker with eyes likes slits in leather, Fred Ward gets a full-on double thumbs-up round here. It's not like he's only done straight-to- video masterpieces, either: as far as we're concerned, any man that has appeared in both Southern Comfort and The Right Stuff should be accepted as a lifetime peer, given a large annual stipend and a hogshead of fine ale at highdays and holidays. Any new Fred Ward movie is a cause for celebration round here.
Here he plays a jaundiced old sheriff, up for re-election, who discover an ideal photo-op when an infamous bank robber, nicknamed Hamlet for his habit of quoting Shakespeare (and not, surprisingly, for his habit of totally failing to kill anyone). Anyway, the photo-op goes a bit sour when it turns out it's his estranged son that's doing the robbing. Now that's got to ruin your day.
Well, yeah, but not as much as it puts a bad spin on events for his son's friends, who all just thought that they were going to the wedding of their friend that's just got out of prison and really doesn't want to go back. Unfortunately, they all end up getting drawn into the robbery and the FBI turn up and so does the enraged bride and there's a huge crowd gathers because it turns out that Hamlet gives all his cash away to orphanages, as some kind of metaphysical statement about his relationship with his father. How bad can things get? After all, this is already pretty ridiculous.
Mercifully, Best Men not merely accepts that its premise is a bit silly, but positively relishes it, throwing in bad puns and meaningful conversations in equal measure. The result is kind of an affable Reservoir Dogs or a chirpy Dog Day Afternoon, two films that receive direct and endearing homages. Indeed, Best Men is a very knowledgeable movie, made by and for people that really know crime flicks. It's knowing, but almost a bit overly so, as the audience is quite likely to spend half the time watching for references, rather than watching the plot. There's no real stars or major talents here, beyond yet another minor cameo from the eternally glorious Drew Barrymore and Brad Dourif, here playing arguably the maddest pilot since either The A-Team's Howling Mad Murdoch or John Belushi in 1941, but I'm not a shrink, so I'm not going to make the call. Anyway, he wanders around, looking like Art Garfunkel and talking like Tom Waites and generally (over- )acting the socks off of just about everyone else here. Everyone else is (quite literally) defined by their underpants, although Dean Cain, making a surprisingly belated cinematic starring appearance, puts a good showing as a well-meaning and good- hearted heavy, but there's not enough meat to his or anyone else's roles. As for supposed lead Sean Patrick Flanery, he's so carried by Fred Ward it's not even a topic for discussion.
In a way, it's a shame that Best Men got a cinema release, because it should have been the best TV movie of the year. Even though it talks a lot about crime films, it comes stylistically from the kind of lazy paced, quirky humor that has typified US non-sitcom TV comedies over the past ten years. It's got the same charm as Northern Exposure or Bakersfield PD or that Elliot Gould tv movie that I can only presume was a pilot for an unmade series but in which he plays the local sheriff in some backwoods town, that has to keep getting his pickles sent up from a New York deli (I can't remember the name, but it keeps cropping up on Channel 5 whenever the pro-celebrity curling gets cancelled). It never quite gets anywhere and, as most productions in this style are character driven and it's only got an hour and a half to examine the characters, it all ends up a bit superficial, but, and this is far more important, it is good intentioned and, for the main part, ambles along pleasantly enough. The plot keeps things going at a jaunty clip, plus some fantastically bad puns on the titles of Shakespeare plays and just enough Drew Barrymore to make you really look forward to her finally getting a decent lead role in the upcoming The Wedding Singer.
If the film has a real problem, it is that it doesn't quite know where it's going. Contrary to what is said about Tarantino, he never makes his crooks attractive, merely human: Best Men presents a bunch of bank robbers, accidental as they may be, as heroes and therefore is in a quandary as to what to do with them. Either it's a comedy, in which case they should have played down the inter-relationships, or it's a serious drama and they should have cut most of the one-liners and entertaining set pieces. There is an attempt to cut a middle-path, most satisfactorily exhibited in an ending that contains direct references to both the grim heroics of Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid and the lucky victories of True Romance (don't worry, I'm not going to spoil it for you by saying who gets away and who gets wasted: this is a discussion, not a spoiler group). It's never 100 per cent on target, which considering it avoids taking the scattershot approach to schmaltz and comedy is more of an issue than it would have been for a less ambitious film. Indeed, it's the ambition of the movie that really singles it out. It's not just a low-budget exercise in punter fleecing but genuinely funny in places and occasionally quite touching.
All in all, Best Men is a fun diversion and a potentially hopeful barometer of something interesting happening in mid-range American semi-indie cinema. Hell, maybe Fred will be able to get the money together for Tremors III and then it will all have been so worthwhile.
RMW