Ca$h (2010)

9 Comments

1. 

   imdb1-548-81619 from Florida
   19 Nov 2011, 1:15 pm

   In this day of cookie-cutter thrillers and Hollywood formula flicks, writer/director Stephen Milburn Anderson and producer Naveen Chathappuram bring us a film that shatters genre rules. It's a story about the power of money and how it manipulates human behavior. In a movie manufactured by Hollywood group-think, this film would have been about two innocent victims (Sam and Leslie) who struggle to make their mortgage payments and one day, during a police chase, a briefcase bursting with cash lands on their old car, they decide to keep the money and the bad guy comes looking for it. It would be the naive couple's story.
   
   But Ca$h isn't that simple. The story starts with Pyke Kubic (Sean Bean), a Brit flying into Chicago to help out his twin brother, Reese (Sean Bean), whose cash-laden briefcase collided with law-abiding Sam's car. So Ca$h is a brother loyalty story. Besides, the brothers make a business deal: Pyke will recover Reese's cash and they'll split it 50/50.
   
   The line blurs between the traditional antagonist and protagonist, especially as the story progresses. Pyke's unexpected accommodating manner and willingness to help Sam and Leslie collect the cash they stowed and recover the rest they spent, paint him as a likable character, not an evil antagonist. But Pyke has powers of persuasion, both intellectual and physical, and Pyke won't stop until he gets what he wants. So he moves in with Sam and Leslie until every last penny of the cash is back in the briefcase.
   
   Pyke is a savant with numbers. When he learns from Leslie the exact tally of cash that was in the briefcase, he keeps a running tab in his mind of missing cash until every cent is replaced. There is a dark gleefulness in many of the scenes. Pyke escorts the couple to Leslie's mum's house, where they've left a large sum of the cash for safekeeping. They discover that Mum has "borrowed" $600 and Pyke says, "When it comes to cash, nobody can be trusted." When Pyke takes the couple to the banker who was foreclosing on their mortgage until Sam showed up with $7,000 in cash (from the briefcase of destiny), Pyke negotiates a brilliant deal with the bank to loan the couple $11,000.
   
   Sean Bean's (Lord of the Rings, Flight Plan, Patriot Games, National Treasure) performance as Pyke is natural and intense. He draws the audience in with his character's centered calmness, unrelenting focus on his goal and precarious balance of civility and violence. Bean plays his character's genius for numbers and deal-making juxtaposed with his descent into thug-driven brutality, when absolutely necessary, with fluid complexity.
   
   Chris Hemsworth (Star Trek, A Perfect Getaway) as Sam gives us a sympathetic, yet humanly flawed character who struggles briefly with the morally right thing to do. It's easy to accept Hemsworth as Sam. He looks like a nice guy; he acts like a nice guy until Pyke shoves Sam into the black hole of criminality. Hemsworth makes the tricky transition from respectable citizen to ruthless armed robber in a convincing arc of desperate acts.
   
   Ca$h isn't a thriller in academic film terms. It's not a traditional action film, either. If the film must have a label, it is neo noir satire. Noir features a desperate protagonist who is an anti-hero. That certainly fits Sean Bean's Pyke/Reese characters. As the story progresses, it also fits Sam and Leslie as they begin to enjoy the power a gun brings to a moment of confrontation, when they're on the trigger end of the 9mm.
   
   Writer/director Stephen Milburn Anderson wrote this script in the Nineties and sat on it until he could make the movie his way. Not giving in to the hellish Hollywood development machine, Anderson and his producers bring us a "genre" film gone rogue.
   
   Just because Hollywood doesn't have the right-size box or label for Ca$h doesn't mean it's not a package worth opening. It's a surprising present of cinema delight and if you are fatigued with Hollywood drivel, Ca$h has your name on it.

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2. 

   Claudio Carvalho from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
   19 Nov 2011, 1:15 pm

   In Chicago, the workers Sam Phelan (Chris Hemsworth) and his wife Leslie (Victoria Profeta) are facing financial problems to pay their mortgage after a period of unemployment. While driving his old Buick below an overpass, Sam sees a wallet falling down on the hood and he finds that there are more than six hundred thousand dollars inside. Sam and Leslie quit their job; pay their mortgage; buy a Land Rover; and refurnish their house. Meanwhile the British criminal Pyke Kubic (Sean Bean) arrives from London to visit his brother Reeve Kubic (Sean Bean) that is imprisoned and tells him that he had thrown the stolen money away to destroy the evidences of the heist but he had seen a Caucasian in an old car getting the wallet. Pyke chases and finds Sam and partially retrieves the money, but more than seventy-four thousand dollars have been spent by the greedy couple and Pyke wants them to refund the amount in five days.
   
   "Ca$h" is an entertaining movie where everybody is corrupt in the end, even those that have been robbed and declare a larger amount to benefit with the insurance. Sean Bean performs a peculiar but very dangerous criminal with a great knowledge of economics. Chris Hemsworth is the typical American low middle class with a great alienation and lack of general culture and the unknown Victoria Profeta is hot and very funny with her big mouth. The screenplay is enjoyable and the resolution of the situation is satisfactory. My vote is seven.
   
   Title (Brazil): "Reféns do Crime" ("Hostages of the Crime")

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3. 

   Rodrigo Ortega from Buenos Aires
   19 Nov 2011, 1:15 pm

   I have to say this is not a bad movie at all, but I think it could be better. The movie starts with a good premise…a man who is driving down the highway suddenly finds a suitcase with more than half a millon dollars inside…what would you do? expend it? return it to the police? give it to the poor?. Unfortunately for him and his wife, he decided to expend it, only to find later on that the owner of the money has found him and wants the money back. Some of the things this man (Sean Bean) forced them to do are a little far fetched and have no sense at all. The script is far from being a master piece and the dialogues are flat, although the acting is really good, especially Sean Bean's performance. I think the director tried to mix comedy, thriller and action but failed to deliver any of them. I found the first hour of the movie very entertaining, but at the end, it got so repetitive that left me with a bittersweet taste. In conclusion, if you're looking for an entertaining movie, to watch on a Sunday afternoon, this could be it, but don't expect to see the best movie of your lives.

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4. 

   MisterRight01 from U.S.
   19 Nov 2011, 1:15 pm

   Obsessive compulsive behavior can be hazardous to your health even if you're a bad guy like Sean Bean. This is one of the oldest crime story ever told i.e. the straight guy ends up with the bad guys money and the bad guy wants it back. This one,however, has a twist: the bad guy is a number guy who has O.C.D. and will not settle for anything less than every penny he is owed. In the process he turns the straight guy and his wife into bad guys like himself. I really liked this movie even when it slowed down a little in the middle, because it was a trick they played on the audience. They were setting us up for a big change in the straight couple's character and a surprise ending. There were little flaws in the movie like; Bean practicing Yoga and smoking like chimney,calling the Illinois DMV the Chicago DMV,and a cop-out repayment plan to some of the victims especially to their jerk of a banker. But, by and large this is a very good crime movie with an exceptional ending.

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5. 

   dinky-4 from Minneapolis
   19 Nov 2011, 1:15 pm

   There's some modest potential here in the relationships between the married couple, who accidentally come into some stolen cash, and the mysterious gunman who comes to retrieve it. A better script might have exploited all three ways of these relationships — how they change, how they twist, how they surprise us as well as the characters themselves. However, while the script occasionally hints at these possibilities, it does little to exploit them and the result is a passable time-killer with most of the limitations of a TV movie. A little tweaking could have made it funnier or scarier or kinkier or more satiric, or could have infused it with more action, but instead "Ca$h" takes no chances and stays in the see-it-and-forget-it mode.
   
   Chris Hemsworth and Victoria Profeta make a blandly attractive couple. Sean Bean is always watchable but he's not knocking himself out here, probably because he has so little to worth with. Curiously, even at age 50 or so, he provides more of the movie's "beefcake" than does young Mr. Hemsworth.

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6. 

   Alice Copeland Brown (alicecbrown@yahoo.com) from Boston
   19 Nov 2011, 1:15 pm

   Now that we know that everyone is a crook, having seen the movie, it's interesting that even the wife's mother stole part of the money she was given for safekeeping Of course, it's a fable, as the money drops out of the sky……from a van that Sean Bean is driving from a bank heist. He goes to jail and his twin brother comes along to go out and retrieve the money….which he does, every penny.
   
   Don't see this movie if you have a pessimistic view toward your fellow man. The only legal crook they show is the loan officer, which was hilarious in view of the fact that bankers are now our worst crooks.
   
   Sean Bean is the greatest actor today, as he can be in real stinkers and still shine. what an expert. Almost as good as inhabiting various roles as Laurence Olivier, but just the hunk version.
   
   If you don't expect much of this movie, you'll enjoy it. The sheer racist and bigoted views expressed at the beginning are in a way hilarious, as they are definitely politically incorrect. But being as it was in Chicago, they should have had some anti-Catholic humor, if they're going to put down blacks, Muslims, Indians, loan officers, mothers-in-law, Asian shop keepers, 'innocent' young wives, and 'big strong' husbands.
   
   Pretty interesting study in the effects of fear, and the Stockholm syndrome. The writer here knows his Freud.

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7. 

   T1GER T1GER from United Kingdom
   19 Nov 2011, 1:15 pm

   This was a fun and enjoyable movie, love beans character very smart.
   
   was quite funny in parts too.
   
   For me Mr Bean has never been a big movie star, i'v seen him in a lot of British TV, so big rolls have always been hard for me to relax with. In Ca$h, he plays the character perfectly. A very smart criminal who is Strong and powerful with just his presence, and when he wants to he seems pretty handy with his fists. The couple Chris Hemsworth and Victoria Profeta both played convincing parts, i found the lady very attractive, and the guy a bit of a wimp for not reacting to the situation somewhat quicker.
   
   would of got 9/10 with more action, this is no dull movie, just could of done with a little more action.
   
   Anyway giving nothing away, this is well worth watching, and has made Sean Bean the star i can now relax with.
   
   I can see bigger movies coming from Mr Bean. ( Not Rowan Atkinson )

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8. 

   JoeytheBrit from www.moviemoviesite.com
   19 Nov 2011, 1:15 pm

   I think Sean Bean is trying to come over all 'brooding menace' here, but the result is a bland monotonous delivery that doesn't really convince. There's no presence – star or menacing – to put across the terrifying situation in which Chris Hemsworth and Victoria Profeta's hapless couple find themselves. Hemsworth's Sam Phelan, an American everyman with virtually no back story finds himself in possession of close to a quarter of a million dollars when a case containing the aforementioned loot – the proceeds from a robbery committed by Bean's identical twin – is thrown from a flyover during a police pursuit. Unfortunately for Sam and his malnourished wife, no sooner have they used some of the money to pay off the arrears on their mortgage, buy a range rover and furnish their home when the Beany man – sporting the quintessentially British name of Pyke Kubic – comes looking for his cash.
   
   It's a simple idea, one that's loaded with possibilities which could go off in any direction, but it's criminally mishandled. We're supposed to sympathise with the Phelan's but they're not really interesting enough to get worked up about. They're not too smart either – which, as the story unfolds, is at least consistent with their paying cash for a $70,000 car immediately after a major robbery in the city. In the UK at least, all retailers are obliged by law to report any cash purchases over a given sum (£10,000, I think) and the police would have been bearing down on the Phelans – and the other characters on Kubic's list, all of whom seem to exist solely to emphasise his racist leanings – long before Phelan's five-day deadline for repayment was over.
   
   The tone of the film is pretty uneven; it looks for a while as if writer/director Stephen Milburn Anderson is going to start playing it for laughs as the couple bicker in their bed and when we see Mrs Phelan smiling pleasantly as Kubic explains how he is going to take all the money away from them, but Anderson seems to drop that idea after a couple of scenes. The inevitable hostility between Kubic and Phelan blows hot and cold, as if Phelan keeps forgetting to be mad at his nemesis, and the story drifts into absurdity as the unlikely trio embark on a succession of hold-ups in order to recover the balance of the money owing.
   
   Bean carries the film, even though his performance is nothing to shout about. It's just that Hemsworth and Profeta's performances are so poor they make Bean look live Olivier by comparison. The film is easy enough to watch if you're on your third beer at the end of a heavy day but you'll have forgotten all about it before the end credits finish rolling.

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9. 

   TraciMoore from United States
   19 Nov 2011, 1:15 pm

   The first thing you notice about Cash is that there is more Bean. More Bean on screen than any other time in my memory. And that, my friends, is a very good thing. Stephen Milburn Anderson chose wisely with his star for his quirky psychological thriller Cash opening next Friday April 9th. Sean Bean plays Pyke Kubic, a quiet, urbane, mannerly man who knows what he wants and knows how to get it. He's been wronged, or rather, his brother has been wronged, and he sets out to find who took the money, to get back what he sees as rightfully his.
   
   Taking a cue from today's headlines, Sam and Leslie Phelan are in debt and underemployed failing to pay their mortgage for the last several months. On his way home, Sam (Chris Hemsworth of Star Trek and the upcoming Thor) drives under an overpass where a briefcase falls onto the hood of his car. Pulling over, his discovers it's full of cash. A lot of cash. With no witnesses, he takes it home to his wife (Victoria Profeta) and they feel they have discovered the answer to their prayers and go on a spending spree. Meanwhile, Pyke arrives from London to visit his brother Reece in jail, who tells his brother that he threw the stolen money away to destroy the evidence of the heist. Before being stopped by police, he saw the case land on the hood of an old station wagon driven by a white guy. Pyke, a clever, calculating man, doesn't take long in finding Sam and Leslie and sets out to take back what's his.
   
   Sean gets to play the juicy role of twins in Cash. I don't understand why no other director has ever thought of before, given Bean's considerable range. In fact, the scenes you see of him opposite himself are some of the most interesting in the film. The slight nuances that Bean is so damn good at. They're there and it's fun to spot them as you watch one slightly more Americanized twin speak with the more established Brit version. Once Bean is in control, the scene is set into motion and the audience sees Sean do what he does best. We've all known that Bean plays a great villain, bristling with rage in films like Patriot Games, or smiling in smug superiority in Goldeneye, or cleverly conspiring in National Treasure; and just as easily he can put a turn in as the tragic but flawed hero Boromir in Lord of the Rings. With Cash, it's his attention to detail, his impeccable manner of dress, his flawless manners and his charming demeanor that are… unsettling. He's a nice guy, this Pyke Kubic. That is, unless you don't do as he asks. And why wouldn't you do as he asks? If you're Sam and Leslie Phelan, you're the ones who are in the wrong here. And so begins the task of giving back Pyke the money they stole from him. Every single cent, down to the last penny. At one point Sam and Leslie say, "Can't you give us a break on the rest? We don't have it." And Pyke answers, "Are you asking me to assume your debt? No, I won't." Hard to argue, that.
   
   Stephen Milburn Anderson puts Stanley Milgram's experiment into action; Pyke makes them steal, they're too afraid to refuse, the more Sam and Leslie start to steal, the easier it starts to become which leads to something darker. "No consequences," he warns, "until after a decision has been made." It becomes clear in Cash that no one acts without having made a clear decision to do so first. This is where Cash makes you think. We are all where every decision has brought us to in life. Is it really possible to keep blaming everyone else for all your mistakes?
   
   There is also something completely unexpected in Cash, a subtle use of comedy at which Sean excels. Deadpan humor laid with an undertone of seriousness that gives you a feeling that he has been waiting to play a part like this with judicious freedom for a long time. Go see Cash, have a great time with Bean on screen for almost 90 minutes and ponder all the possibilities.

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