The late Bill Paxton stars as a con-artist modern-day traveller in this undistinguished flick, and he enlists wannabe gypsy Mark Wahlberg to help him with his schemes. The gorgeous Julianna Marguiles is caught up in the ride, for all the good it does her.
By no means a bad movie, it ambles along quite nicely with diverting scenes involving the central duo's various shady scams and friendly (sometimes not) banter between them. Paxton's romance is Marguiles is probably one of the weakest parts, as it pops up out of almost nowhere, and the chemistry just isn't really there. Plus she has a daughter who can't act for toffee, which is perhaps why she was given as few lines as possible.
Still like I said, everything is sort of fine until the last ten minutes or so, where we get an unexpectedly violent conclusion followed up by an unbelievably contrived deux ex machina. Then the 'happy' ending begins... and you can definitely tell they rewrote this script on the hoof during production to make it more palatable to a mainstream audience (according to the IMDB trivia section, anyway).
So, that's it. Yet another film slightly spoiled by the unnecessary decision to push an unrealistically generic final reel. If you actually liked it, that's fine. But I'd rather have something in line with what the plot demands, than designed to placate the masses in the cinema aisles... 5/10.
By no means a bad movie, it ambles along quite nicely with diverting scenes involving the central duo's various shady scams and friendly (sometimes not) banter between them. Paxton's romance is Marguiles is probably one of the weakest parts, as it pops up out of almost nowhere, and the chemistry just isn't really there. Plus she has a daughter who can't act for toffee, which is perhaps why she was given as few lines as possible.
Still like I said, everything is sort of fine until the last ten minutes or so, where we get an unexpectedly violent conclusion followed up by an unbelievably contrived deux ex machina. Then the 'happy' ending begins... and you can definitely tell they rewrote this script on the hoof during production to make it more palatable to a mainstream audience (according to the IMDB trivia section, anyway).
So, that's it. Yet another film slightly spoiled by the unnecessary decision to push an unrealistically generic final reel. If you actually liked it, that's fine. But I'd rather have something in line with what the plot demands, than designed to placate the masses in the cinema aisles... 5/10.