The Crew (2000 film)

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The Crew
Crew poster.jpg
Theatrical release poster
Directed by Michael Dinner
Written by Barry Fanaro
Produced by Barry Sonnenfeld
Barry Josephson
Starring
Cinematography Juan Ruiz Anchía
Edited byNicholas C. Smith
Music by Steve Bartek
Production
companies
Distributed by
Release date
  • August 25, 2000 (2000-08-25)
Running time
87 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$38 million
Box office$13.1 million [1]

The Crew is a 2000 American black comedy crime film directed by Michael Dinner, and starring Burt Reynolds, Seymour Cassel, Richard Dreyfuss, Dan Hedaya, Carrie-Anne Moss, Jeremy Piven and Jennifer Tilly. Barry Sonnenfeld was one of the film's producers. The film is about four retired mobsters doing one last crime against a drug lord. It was released on August 25, 2000. The Crew garnered negative reviews and was a box-office bomb, grossing $13.1 million against a $38 million budget.

Contents

Plot

Four retired mobsters Bobby - the straight man leader, Bats - a cantankerous man with a short fuse and a pacemaker, Mouth - a silent ladies man many years past his prime, and Brick - a nice but dimwitted man plan one last crime to save their apartment at a retirement home (the owners are forcing them out with a double rent increase so that the apartments can be rented to young, affluent South Beach couples). The four steal a corpse from the mortuary to use as the "victim" in a staged murder scene. Unknown to them, the body was that of Luis Ventanna, the head of a Colombian drug smuggling ring. As a result of the "murder", many of the young renters leave and the four men are given cash and a rent discount by the complex to keep living there. Much of this money is spent on high living and women, which causes a young stripper, Ferris to discover that the four men staged the murder - while spending time with the normally-silent "Mouth," he reveals that his mouth is loosened by intimacy with women.

To keep the woman quiet, the four agree to kill her stepmother, but instead kidnap her and fake her death by setting fire to her mansion. In the process, they accidentally burn down the house of the drug-smuggler's son, Raoul, who happened to live in a nearby mansion. Believing that someone is trying to usurp his power, the drug lord offers $100,000 to anyone who brings him the head of the man responsible. This results in a confrontation at the apartment, leading to the capture of a female police officer and her partner (who later turns out to be secretly working for the drug smugglers), one of the wiseguys, the young woman, and the stepmother. The other wiseguys manage to escape this conflict, and track down the men who kidnapped their friend.

They call in all of their still-living former associates from their active years and lay siege to the ship where the drug lord is holding his prisoners. They then turn the ship and the drug smugglers over to the police, along with a shipment of drugs and the dirty cop. A truckload of Cuban cigars is taken by the men and used to make their apartment complex into "a retirement home for old wiseguys who are down on their luck."

A sub-plot of the movie involves Bobby's search for his long lost daughter, Olivia, whom he hasn't seen since he was in his 30s and she was a small child, having grown into the detective whom they rescued from the drug smugglers.

Cast

Reception

The Crew received negative reviews upon release, and was mostly noted for its similarities to Space Cowboys , which also involved four retirees who return for one last job (in that case, to go back into space). On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes , 20% of 85 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 3.8/10.The website's consensus reads: "Though the four actors are good together, the jokes are stale and not funny." [2] Metacritic , which uses a weighted average , assigned the film a score of 37 out of 100, based on 28 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable" reviews. [3]

Roger Ebert criticized the film for having an unbelievable premise with "desperate" slapstick and aggression, and characters that lack chemistry and individualism compared to the "heft and dimension" the main cast of Space Cowboys had, saying that "The Crew unfolds as a construction, not a series of surprises and delights." [4] A. O. Scott of The New York Times commended Dreyfuss and Hedaya for their performances and Fanaro's script for having an "inspired set piece" and "pretty funny" jabs at "ethnic stereotypes", but wrote that: "The Crew is cobbled together in desperate obedience to the widespread Hollywood fallacy that the more plot a movie has, the more people will like it." [5] Entertainment Weekly 's Lisa Schwarzbaum gave the film a D grade, highlighting the script's "stereotyping" of its main leads, saying that "each man's shtick swells into a frenzy of overacting in the name of aging that should have died with The Golden Girls ." [6]

It was a box office flop, grossing only US$13 million off an estimated $38 million budget.

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References

  1. ↑ The Crew at Box Office Mojo
  2. ↑ "The Crew". Rotten Tomatoes . Fandango Media . Retrieved March 13, 2022. OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
  3. ↑ "The Crew". Metacritic . Fandom, Inc. Retrieved March 13, 2022.
  4. ↑ Ebert, Roger (August 25, 2000). "The Crew". Chicago Sun-Times . Sun-Times Media Group. Archived from the original on May 12, 2021. Retrieved March 13, 2022– via RogerEbert.com.Star full.svgStar half.svgStar empty.svgStar empty.svg
  5. ↑ Scott, A. O. (August 25, 2000). "'The Crew:' The Crime of the Ancient Marinaras". The New York Times . Retrieved March 13, 2022.
  6. ↑ Schwarzbaum, Lisa (August 29, 2000). "The Crew". Entertainment Weekly . Archived from the original on October 18, 2000. Retrieved March 13, 2022.
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