JUST PLAY DEAD

 

JUST PLAY DEAD is a brand new movie, which I rented on demand. It's not playing in any theaters in my area, and after watching it I doubt it is going to have any sort of theatrical future at all. 

The movie concerns con artist Jack Wolfe (Samuel L. Jackson), who is living in luxury on the Caribbean island of San Miguel. Wolfe finds out he is going to be indicted for fraud, so he comes up with an idea to fake his death and collect on a $30 million dollar insurance policy. He tries to entice his wife Nora (Eva Green) into the plot, but she has plenty of reasons of her own to have Jack killed for real, and she's also juggling two lovers who might be enticed to help her: a cop (Eoin Macken) and a dopey boy toy (Jason Fernandez). 

JUST PLAY DEAD has a style that I would call "pseudo-Tarantino", which is probably the main reason Samuel L. Jackson was cast. All the characters try to act as cool and self-assured as possible, there's plenty of long dialogue exchanges in which every other line features a certain four-letter word, and there are flashbacks and flash-forwards. Director Martin Campbell (who is a long way from his THE MASK OF ZORRO and CASINO ROYALE days) tries to make things as edgy as possible, at least from a 21st Century perspective. Nora's boy toy beach bum is constantly stoned, and she and Jack are either always smoking cigarettes or drinking copious amounts of liquor. All the bad-ass posturing gets tiresome after awhile--all the characters are backstabbing each other or screwing one another (literally and figuratively). Due to the overall cynical nature of the film, the viewer really doesn't care what happens to anyone. 

The movie was filmed in the Canary Islands, and it at least looks attractive, as does Eva Green. Eva is once again playing a scheming femme fatale, and she proves here that she's still far more alluring and seductive than just about all the actresses half her age. Samuel L. Jackson does what is expected of him, but it's still entertaining to listen to him recite dialogue in his special way. 

One good thing about JUST PLAY DEAD is that it's only about 90 minutes long, but other than Samuel L. Jackson and Eva Green, it doesn't have many more positive attributes.