REVIEW:
In the interest of full journalistic disclosure (which should, of course, never be confused with name-dropping), I'll reveal right off the bat that Brian Koppelman and David Levien, the writer-directors of Knockaround Guys, are very dear friends of mine.
That said, Koppelman and Levien, who also cowrote Rounders, here deliver a tough, funny, entertaining fish-out-of-water tale with a big heart and a lot of telling, realistic detail. The milieu is familiar-mobsterdom. The hook is that the title's knockaround guys are second- or third-generation goodfellas torn between legit dreams and the pull of The Life. These New York toughs and would-be toughs (Barry Pepper, Seth Green, Vin Diesel, and Andrew Davoli), in a misbegotten attempt to prove their mobster mettle, end up in the wilds of Montana trying to locate a misplaced bag of big money, and discover that things are done a little different in flyover country.
No, it's not change-your-life material, but it's good stuff. Pepper has a lot of quiet charisma, Diesel delivers what may turn out to be his last actual performance in a movie, and Green is shlubby but lovable. While Dennis Hopper's mob boss is a trifle haggard (not to mention ethnically suspect), John Malkovich is clearly relishing his role as a too-smart-for-the-room (so he thinks) subordinate. And Tom Noonan's midwestern lawman is as nasty a snake as you're likely to see in any movie this year. All in all, a very promising first effort, and I say that as someone whose acting debut was actually cut out of the movie, damn it.
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Knockaround Guys
Release Date: October 11
Starring: Barry Pepper, Vin Diesel, Seth Green, Dennis Hopper, John Malkovich
Directed by: Brian Koppelman and David Levien
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Copyright © 2008 Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., Inc.