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The Real McCoy

sleeping sheepsnake | Ontario, Canada | 02/27/2007

(2 out of 5 stars)

"I was at work today, and when I mentioned to a friend that I had watched a boring movie called The Real McCoy the night before, starring Kim Basinger and Val Kilmer, he told me he had watched Crank. Apparently I should have watched Crank, based on what he said. As far as The Real McCoy goes, I explained that it was a pity that Val Kilmer's character started out as kind of interesting, in a comical way, but then seemed to have no personality about halfway through the film. My friend said "Isn't that always the case with Val Kilmer? Heh heh.". Joking, maybe, but I didn't feel that was fair. I said: "What about The Doors?"; Friend: "Oh yaahhhhh! That was a great movie!". I said: "What about The Salton Sea?"; Friend" "Oh yaaahhhhhhh! That was a great movie!.".

So, The Real McCoy is not just a Val Kilmer problem. Halfway through the film, everything shuts down. It's like the film stops all forward momentum, but just keeps going forward anyway. Kilmer simply becomes completely irrelevant to the proceedings, like he's just following Basinger around while she connects a few dots to get to the end credits.

This is a heist picture--a complex bank heist, to be precise. The complex bank heist is clever, but it requires very little action, just some nifty gadgets, and some repetitous rannygazoo to fake out the cops while the real quasi-action goes down. The thieves even bring along snacks and a thermos of coffee to keep them tided over during the heist--they've got that kind of time.

Before the heist is the human-interest stuff. Freshly-paroled heistmaster Karen McCoy (Kim Basinger) just wants to connect with her young son, who is being kept out of her reach by her estranged hubbie, who told the kid she was dead. She's saddled with a sweaty, lecherous parole officer who wants favours for allowing her her continued freedom. Then there's J. T. Barker (Val Kilmer) who recognizes her and starts trailing her around like a lovesick guppy, until she finally decides she needs him to help her get her son back--NOT from her ex-husband anymore, but from a crimeboss she blames for her jail-time, who wants her to pull off one last score, a hit on the Atlanta Union Bank (which seems to have a sign more suitable to a strip-joint). Enter the heist.

Basinger looks great; besides the lecherous parole officer she's the only thing to really generate any kind of emotional reaction in me (opposite reactions). The action scenes are few and far between. The plot has no delightful zigzags or jolts that get you interested in the scene you're watching, or the one to come. I find it hard to believe that this is the same director of Ricochet, with Denzel Washington, which is no classic, but plays mind-games, and doles out some gritty action. The Real McCoy makes several promises in the first half hour and then decides it doesn't have to keep any of them: no suspense, no romance, no real pyrotechnics during the heist, and to top it all off, a big tiger that obviously doesn't know what to do with an appetizing-looking bad guy. Some of the music by Brad Fiedel--of Terminator fame--is cool, and Kilmer has some fun at the start, but the movie is entirely too relaxed to function as a thriller. And I can't call it a successful comedy, romance, or family drama, by any stretch, so we're rut-snagged. My friend's twenty-second description of Crank was more involving than this pillow disguised as a movie."