(rated R)
Based on a true newspaper story comes this wacky brilliant comedy starring Alec Baldwin as an underdog FBI agent, Joe Devine, working under his boss, Ray Liotta. Unable to land a major Washington D.C. gig, the government sends him to Providence to help bust John Gotti’s cousin, Tommy Sanz (Tony Shalhoub). In order for the mission to work, they have to pretend to film a movie so that the sting operation can nail the mob. But first they have to find a stupid director (Matthew Broderick) and a stupider actress (Calista Flockhart) who otherwise spends her life living next to a dog kennel where she throws tantrums and threatens to murder pups. This alone is worth the price of admission. So Devine poses as a Hollywood producer in order to break the Teamster-related racketeering. Tim Blake Nelson plays the washed up brother of Broderick to a host of other hilarious roles including Buck Henry. Just when you think the acting can’t get any better, along comes Toni Collette as Emily French, the movie star in the storyline. Just about the funniest, wittiest and right-on-est movie this year. The amazing backstory is that in real life 1980s a pair of aspiring filmmakers attempted to really do this – make a movie, get financial backing – only to find out they were part of a FBI sting operation. Later highly tooted in Details magazine in an article “What’s Wrong With This Picture?” the irony is it really became a high concept movie in 2004. It should be noted that the screenwriter, Jeff Nathanson is good at these thief type capers. He wrote “Catch Me If You Can” for Steven Spielberg.
