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Enough (2002) from Mick Locke and Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski) |
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Is it okay to be entertained and satisfied viewing a
film with contrived circumstances, a Swiss cheese plot, and an
implausible outcome to a final battle royal? If that outcome's what
we'd hoped for, yes it is.
This is a predator-and-prey suspense flick with strong acting, clearly depicted characterization of good gal vs. bad guy, and a plot which - though cheesy - keeps on truckin'. In a solid star turn, Jennifer Lopez plays Slim, a diner waitress who lucks into a seemingly Cinderella marriage with a rich and handsome big guy. By the time she realizes that their initial encounter was a scam, she's been cheated on, slapped, punched, beaten while attempting to flee, and relentlessly pursued. With a Rambolina twist, only when she trains herself for physical combat and fights back does she triumph.
Valiantly assisting JLo-as-Slim to make this film
work is Billy Campbell, playing her villainous control-freak
husband, Mitch. Let's hear it for bad guys! Without 'em, good guys
and good gals would look lame. As Mitch, Campbell is a helluva good
bad guy. He's smug, sinister, persistent, persuasive, at times
charming and wry, and most of all scary and hulking. Early in the
film, he alarms us by using a veiled threat to cajole a geezer into
selling his house at an above-market price. But the real tip-off is
when we watch JLo slip off her wifely bathrobe (viewed by us from
behind, above the waist, alas) and he rebuffs her come-on. This guy
is up to no good.
Supporting actors include Juliette Lewis as Slim's
best friend Ginny and Fred Ward as her biological father Jupiter
(no, not the god, just a fortuitously filthy-rich guy). So
captivating on the screen are those two that you wanna segue into
alternative films with each as principal character. But, you accept
their brief scenes with gratitude, like Charlton Heston's bit in
Wayne's World. If this character has only one line, let it be
delivered by a Star!
Unlike the graphic wife-beating brutality of films
like What's Love Got to do With It and Once Were
Warriors, this movie is mercifully non-graphic. The
made-for-TV plot is matched by three rather fastidious scenes of
physical abuse - precluding the final bloody donnybrook. To his
first slap and punch, JLo offers no resistance. On attempting to
flee and getting caught, she's subjected to mostly off-screen blows
which leave no viewable bruises. And in what should have been the
final fight, she gets shoved and choked, but escapes. The kid gets
shoved, too.
Yes, they've upped the ante from Julia Roberts's
Sleeping With the Enemy. This fleeing wife must cart along
a wailing five-year-old daughter. But the kid plays along. At one
point, their cover having been blown, rendering not just their
original but also their sham identities unusable, the child is asked
by a kindly old waitress, "What's your name?" She matter-of-factly
replies, "I-don't-know."
Sad to say, Hollywood is incapable of making a
credible film about a beaten wife, since the requisite happy ending
always requires resources beyond those of most battered women. In
What's Love..., Tina Turner has talent and celebrity to
fall back on. In Once Were Warriors (a terrific flick from
New Zealand), the wife has an entire Maori tribe and village to flee
to. And in this film, JLo has a well-networked surrogate dad who
sets her up in a new locale with a job. And her convenient bio-dad
Jupiter sends her a fat stack of fifty-dollar bills with offers of
more. In fact, he sets her up (while Juliette Lewis babysits for a
month's vacation in Orlando - how much does that cost?) with the
statuesque, deep-voiced, reassuring strong black god of
Justice-Through-Kickboxing who trains her alone in a very tony-looking
gym. At this point you'd like to hear the Rocky Balboa theme music.
For anyone out there who enjoys a good gamble,
lemme propose one. Let's take Michelle Yeoh, the warrior actress
from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, who has a couple solid
decades of martial arts training. And let's pit her (the actress,
not the character who o'erleaps tall buildings with a single bound)
against a hunky, athletic, angry, mean-spirited, violent guy in his
physical prime, who's at least half again her weight and easily
twice her strength. Fair fight? Who'll win? Safe bet?
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Well then, let's pare down the petite gal's twenty
years of martial arts training to a solitary month. Now what are the
odds? And let's include lessons in cat-burglary so JLo can climb a
wall, pick a lock, override the home security system of a wealthy
paranoiac, and peer down from the rafters unseen. This flick's scenes
of the Rocky Balboa month with the big dude in the gym apparently left
out her evening sessions with Greg Morris teaching all the high-tech
skills she suddenly exhibits, unless she picked 'em up waitressing.
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The most egregious implausibility is that Slim
fights Mitch on his own turf, where he's undoubtedly at his strongest,
both tactically and legally. This she chooses to do, having passed up
a primo chance to rub him out on her turf during their prior
encounter. In that instance, she had him temporarily down and
disabled (to tell how would spoil one rare, worthy surprise in your
viewing) in her own well-prepped digs. Despite the inconvenient
presence of their daughter (who could perhaps be dispatched to hide in
a closet, so's not to see this), Slim would have had a primo
opportunity to pull out a cached baseball bat and whack the bastard as
an illegal intruder.
But no, that ain't what we bought tickets to see.
And before a grand jury Slim will no doubt explain the fighting rings,
boxing tape, and combat boots she put on before her final fight.
She'll explain the high-tech equipment in the bright yellow duffle bag
that she sank off the pier at Mitch's marina. She'll explain the
month of kickboxing in prep and the impressive results of bloodying
the bejesus out of Mitch in his own home before her final bodacious
kick hurtles him through a high railing to his skull-cracking death.
That stuff doesn't matter to us in the audience. We bought tickets to
see an abuser get his ass whupped by the woman he'd abused. We want
to see that little gal kick the everlivin' spit outta his surly
deserving carcass. Viscerally, this is a satisfying scene, whether or
not it's grossly implausible. This movie should rent and sell well
for a long time. We all wanna see a bully get his comeuppance. Or is
it godownance?
Three stars out of five.
Scoop's comments in yellow: This is one bad movie. Not just bad. Dreadfully, unimaginably, irredeemably bad. In one of the most obscure references in movie reviewing history, Roger Ebert compared this film to "I Spit on Your Grave". He was generous. This film is acted better than "I Spit", which was mostly made with amateurs, but is probably not as good. It's almost bad beyond calculation:
You'd think they would have stumbled into something logical at one point or another. Just by accident. For example, J-Lo's biggest problem is that she is a penniless nobody up against a husband who is not only abusive, but the world's second-richest guy. So he's dazzling her with the law as well as his fists. Now J-Lo's biological father, who finally takes an interest in the game, is the world's richest guy, and is even more ruthless than the husband. Isn't that convenient? But as silly as that premise is, they don't even develop it after introducing it. He could hire better lawyers, tougher thugs that the husband. Hell, the dad is so rich and powerful he probably has guys like Dick Cheney, half the Senate, and several members of the Supreme Court in his country club. That would have been a better movie, and would have beaten the bad guy at his own game. Instead he sends her a few grand and sets her up with Mr. Myagi. In a couple of weeks of waxing on and off, J-Lo becomes The Karate Kid, and then takes the law into her own hands. Perfect. The film did manage to prove that it is possible to underestimate the taste and intelligence of the American public, after all. They finally rejected it. After a respectable opening week, it hit the skids, taking in only $6 million on its second weekend, despite being in 2600 theaters. It didn't fool the critics either. Many reviewers noted that it was basically an uncredited remake - a rip-off of "Sleeping With The Enemy". (Hey, didn't Double Jeopardy come close enough?) This violates one of the Scoopy unspoken unities - "if you're gonna rip somebody off, make it somebody competent, fer chrissake" |
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