Crimewave

Sam Raimi directing a Coen Brothers script with Bruce Campbell. On paper, it’s a dream. On screen, it’s a snooze.

The plot hardly matters, but here goes: Victor, a nebbish security technician, loves Nancy, who’s tangled up with small-time grifter Renaldo, played by Campbell. Corporate backstabbing leads to hired killers. Bodies pile up. Victor gets blamed. The film opens with him on death row and tells the story in flashback—robbing us of even the thin pleasure of suspense.

The real crime here is tone. Raimi wants Three Stooges slapstick. The Coens want deadpan absurdity. The film lurches between tones—crash-zoom screams, POV shots of dishes hurtling through space, killers who grunt and mumble like Curly Howard on a murder spree. The Coens’ signature weirdos populate the frame, but there’s no straight man to anchor the quirk. It’s all excess, no control.

Consider how a restaurant sequence looks like it’s set in the 1930s despite the movie taking place in contemporary Detroit. Why? Another tonal detour, this time into film noir. It works as well as you’d expect. In trying to be everything, it succeeds at nothing.

Granted, some moments work despite the chaos. This much talent can’t help but stumble into a few laughs. But they’re scattered across 85 minutes that feel twice as long. You keep checking your watch, hoping the flashback structure will pay off, that once we catch up to death row the film will click into place. It doesn’t. At least the ending is mercifully brief.

I suspect the story behind Crimewave—the nightmare production, the studio interference—will prove more entertaining than the movie itself. But that’s a low bar.