Despite the fact that every character in 30 Minutes or Less is either an idiot or
is just acting like one, it doesn’t quite rise to the level of an Idiot
Plot. No, that would require characters smart enough to pick up on the fact
that the whole complicated mess of a heist is basically ready and available for
any one of these participants to figure out, no extra explanation required. These are characters that are
constantly loudly, and energetically explaining themselves and their
motivations, continually talking away their leverage and backing into dangerous
situations almost by accident. It would be funnier if the whole pace and tone
of the film weren’t ever so slightly off.
The movie reunites Zombieland
director Ruben Fleischer with that excellent comedy’s star Jesse Eisenberg,
who here plays a pizza delivery guy who drives into a whole mess of trouble one
fateful night. He delivers a pizza to two scheming slackers (Danny McBride and
Nick Swardson) who knock him unconscious and wire a bomb vest to his chest. When
he wakes up, he’s told that he has ten hours to rob a bank or the bomb will
explode. If he tells anyone about his predicament, the bomb will explode. If he
fails to get them a large sum of money, the bomb will explode. These two guys
seem pretty stupid though, so it seems all-too-likely that this bomb is going
to explode no matter what.
The reason for this convoluted scheme is even dumber and
loopier than you might expect. McBride can’t wait to inherit the fortune of his
lottery-winner multi-millionaire ex-military father (Fred Ward), so he sets out
to hire a professional assassin (a terrifically funny Michael Peña) in order to
speed up the process. Unfortunately, hitmen are expensive, so McBride and his
dumber pal Swardson hatch a plan to make some sucker rob a bank for them so
that they can pay the killer to kill the father. That this all makes total
sense to them tells you how dumb these schemers are.
So, there you have it. Instead of merely committing murder,
the two think it will be much safer to take some intermediary steps that will
consist of nothing less than kidnapping, extortion, conspiracy, and all manner
of frightening crimes. You see, they’re idiots. But the pizza guy seems clever
enough, that is until he runs, bomb in tow, into a local school where his best
friend (Aziz Ansari) works to explain the situation and get some help. After
some unhelpful ideas for removing the explosive garment (“Why don’t we cut off
your arms?”), the two guys decide that they may as well rob the bank. Maybe
these guys aren’t much smarter.
There’s an excellent ticking-time-bomb element to the movie
that the script by Michael Dilberti fails to kick into motion. It’s all very
economically handled with some moderately entertaining chase elements and
unrepentantly mean silliness, but, despite the weight of the bomb literally
sitting on the protagonist’s chest, the propulsion just isn’t there. The plot
takes plenty of sidetracks and diversions while filling up with banter that
just didn’t register as too terribly funny with me. It’s only 83 minutes, but
it feels longer.
The movie rockets forward at one constant, grating pace that
requires the actors to constantly raise the pitch of their voices in
incredulity with the speedy tempo of the dialogue. They all sound like they’re
in a hurry, like they’re running on nothing but nervous energy or misplaced
self-confidence, but the movie seems to be taking its own sweet time to get
where it’s going. The cadence of the comedy is off, with lines landing just
before or just after the sweet spot, with the tone sometimes skewing deeply
dark, other times crudely light. Only Peña makes a mark and that’s because he
wriggles out of the constraints of the tightly written looseness and delivers a
weirdly successful mumbly lisping with a peculiarly airy quality that separates
his speaking from the thudding rat-a-tat of the rest’s.
Fleischer has a great deal of confidence in the director’s
chair. He brings the slick energy that, were the movie itself better, would
keep things zipping along nicely. Instead the movie drags itself through its
quick set-ups and pay-offs, mechanically arriving at the storytelling beats
while dragging its cast along. In the end, it seems to end with a shrug, over
before it really got a chance to make an impact. It’s slightly less than good
and a little better than mediocre, just enough to feel all the more a disappointment.
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