Scanialara You won't be disappointed!

TinsHeadline Touches You

Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Mathilde the Guild Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

vchimpanzee Henry has a boring job in the Buffalo area as a toll collector. We never see exactly what road he is on, but it appears there is lots more traffic in the background than there is on his road.One morning he comes home and gets to spend some time with wife Debbie, a nurse. Their marriage seems okay. Then Henry's friends, including Eddie, come over and say they need him to play in an important softball game. But they need to make a stop at the Buffalo Savings Bank first. All four men are wearing uniforms, but Henry has to stay in the van. The other three put on masks and rob the bank. Only Henry is caught, and since he won't rat on his friends, he gets sent up the river.Fortunately, Henry's cellmate is a really nice man named Max. Max is a lifer who likes prison and has no desire to get out. Henry doesn't seem to despise prison, but he would like to leave. And his time is over pretty quickly. His wife has left him, and he needs to figure out what to do with his life. Henry finds out about a tunnel built between the bank and what is now Orpheum Theater, used for a speakeasy during Prohibition. He did the time, so why not rob the bank anyway? In the process of investigating Henry meets Julie, an actress best known for lottery commercials who is acting in a Chekhov play at the theater, but wants to be a real actress. As a cover, Henry decides to join the play, and he's actually pretty good. And he and Julie seem to like each other. He later gets more help when Max gets out on parole and continues his previous life as a "confidence man" (he hates the term "con man"). And the cop who caught Henry wants to help too, because he's not appreciated.One possible problem: Eddie and his friends want in on the action.Can Henry get away with it? This is the type of movie where we want him to succeed, like in "Ocean's Eleven".In a better movie, James Caan would have been nominated for an Oscar for his excellent portrayal of Max. He is the standout performer here.Vera Farmiga is quite good as Julie, who is better than this sorry role. And yet she gives it her all. What she does on stage and in rehearsals is worthy of being seen on the Tonys.Keanu Reeves is okay. Not bad. Not great. He's better in the Chekhov play.Fisher Stevens does a very good job. I'm used to seeing him as a basically nice guy who is sleazy, but here is is just bad. Not bad in that sense. He's very good at being bad.There's no clear ending. I will say that much. So I'm not quite sure what happens. But the climactic scene is pretty amazing.It's really worth seeing.

denis888 I understand why some people did not like this very good film - it is slower, and it is not The Matrix, or Konstantin. This is a very good work, and yes, Keanu's character is a bit slow, silent and detached - but here is what he is like. His role is balanced perfectly by fiery and very funny James Caan who did a very, very excellent job. His part of a con-man is a great plus, and his part is almost The best in here. Vera Farmiga is another great plus of the movie, her part of a Russian theater actress is very cool, too. She does a perfect Diva here, and does it extremely convincing way. Well, yes, the movie is not a fast and furious action one, but this was not the intent. The very theater style of the film is obvious, and the nice link to the Chekhov's play is a warm heart-thawing welcome for all Russian viewers. Keanu is a very good Lopakhin and Vera is a very sweet Ranevskaya. And then, yeah, here is excellent Peter Stormare as a choleric and very short-tempered theater director with all his idiosyncrasies and craze. Casting was done very well, and this stellar ensemble of actors is a mighty element for the great movie.

dunmore_ego He did the time for a bank robbery he didn't commit. Now that he's out, he's really gonna rob that bank. Nice Concept. Might look implausible if the actors don't tread delicately with utmost conviction. Or unless you can find an actor that stands outside the field of acting altogether and can retain a blank poker face through it all. Enter Keanu Reeves.He's Henry, a shiftless toll booth operator in Buffalo, suckered into being accessory to a bank robbery and imprisoned, whereupon his cellmates (led by James Caan as Max) urge him to exact recompense for the injustice of his incarceration: when he gets out, commit a real crime to make up for the time he already did unjustly.Though a comedy caper movie, HENRY'S CRIME is not flashy or frenetic; it's indie all the way (written by David White, Stephen Hamel and Sacha Gervasi - who may be the love-child of Sacha Baron Cohen and Ricky Gervais). With lean, expedient direction by Malcolm Venville, initially funded by Keanu himself, the movie plods along bemusedly and interestingly, much like its lead character, who takes everything with equanimity. He is, after all, The One.Henry never bats an eyelid when he is arrested; or when his girlfriend (insipid Judy Greer) visits him in jail to tell him she has fallen in love; even when he is victim of a violent Meet Cute, as he is run down in the street by aspiring theater actress Julie (the stunning Vera Farmiga, in an uncharacteristically shrikey role). Nothing seems to reach this guy's nerve endings. Usually I would laugh and/or complain about the lack of acting from Keanu, but in this context, his demeanor fits perfectly. One would have to be quite inured to emotion existing each day in the suburban rut we find him in, and then to endure jail time. Yet his determination (or whatever you'd call that somnambulistic pseudo-ambition) to lash out and grab life by the baby-makers, to rob the very bank he was convicted of robbing indicates SOME kind of moral outrage at the least.Didn't Morpheus tell us The One would bring balance? Henry needs Max to help him pull the heist, so he convinces Max to take his parole. Up 'til now, Max - a lifer who loves prison for its regularity - has dialed the Crazy up to 8 every time he sat in front of the parole board. He'd rather be called a "confidence man" than "con-man" (too pedestrian); perpetrating a crime is not even about the money, but the thrill of the chase, and getting caught for that crime will only land him back in jail - which he loves - so it's all win-win for him.Henry and Julie must necessarily bonk, she must necessarily figure in the plot (by rehearsing in a theater right next door to the bank - a theater which once had a tunnel connecting it to the bank vault - oh, heavens to plot convenience!), Max necessarily provides comic sidekick relief, and Henry must necessarily become an unwitting hero during the heist... What ISN'T so necessary is Peter Stormare going above and beyond as eccentric Euro director of the play, Darek Millodragovic, whose overacting and over-accent is so hilarious, Keanu almost snapped out of his jet lag.To infiltrate the theater complex, Henry must join the theater company... and so flowers the greatest irony in this movie: this guy who Can't Actually Act (in real life or in this movie role) must act at being an Actor.It's a fine line this movie treads in making Henry an anti-hero (read as criminal) and allowing him to commit a crime that is not morally reprehensible, so he doesn't lose the audience. In that sense, Keanu's underplaying-to-the-point-of-chloroform performance is exemplary, selling us a character who bemusedly decides that his only post-prison option is to actually do what the confidence man suggested.Amusing resolution, though gutless, as Henry has to somehow pay for his crime, no matter how innocuous it was, and no matter that he was already convicted mistakenly. Damn you MPAA, and your obnoxious, hypocritical meddling in otherwise interesting movies! If the MPAA had any sense - which they don't - they would make the people who incarcerated Henry incorrectly pay for THAT injustice. But that's too complicated for a society weaned on seeing "crime" as low-level, easily-defeated, punch-em-up tropes. The jejune surrender to good screen writing by making Henry get busted again - simply for trying to even the score against The Man - THAT... is the movie's real crime.--Poffy The Cucumber

ultragothic Why the "awful" rating? Our cable channel offered it for free and got almost no takers... I watched it and could see why! Sorry Keanu but first you're brain- dead with no explanation then suddenly you are a "natural" actor who can do Chekov instantly? Slow, dumb non-event with great supporting cast simply wasted on this. It lacks any kind of dynamic in the story, drama or plot. Reeves goes to the nicest prison on the planet which is full of mature, well-balanced, kindly folk (here I vomit)and manages to be liked, loved and respected by everyone - even the wife who left him and the cop who arrested him for bank robbery - without lifting a finger or even an eyebrow! A plot full of lazy holes and patches....they spent millions and made peanuts on this straight to the give-away bin DVD.