Crime Stories on Film

I fully intended to review another book this week. I promise, I really did. But then I saw these two videos and they were too good to keep to myself.

Staying with the crime theme, I rented Blood Guts Bullets & Octane and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Sometimes you only have a couple of hours to dedicate to your crime fix - no time to knock out a 300-page novel, right? These movies might do it for you.

Joe Carnahan made Blood Guts Bullets & Octane for $7,300. He wrote, directed, edited, and acted in it. Before red flags start going up that this is another bad indie film, remember El Mariachi.

The plot: Two fast-talking used car salesmen need quick cash or they're going to lose their dealership. Along comes the opportunity of a lifetime: $250K if they'll just babysit a red '63 Pontiac LeMans for a couple of days. That's it. Cake.

Greed is a great motivator, though. There's something in the trunk, which is wired to a bomb. The guys decide to up the ante and ransom the car. Add the FBI and a string of unsolved murders along roads from South America to Sacramento - with the LeMans as the hottest piece of evidence on the ticket. Bring in a cooler-than-cool hitman. Now you have a Tarantinoesque film that winds around plot holes with hustling dialogue and plenty of mayhem.

Bob and Sid are your typical dialogue-driven car salesmen. You don't like 'em. Then you do. Then you don't. Carnahan plays with your allegiances. He uses frequent flashbacks, alternating between color and black-and-white. He brings the camera in at weird angles. Be prepared. It's not Blair Witch Project by any means, but it can be a bit irritating.

The teaser on the video box says, "Better than The Usual Suspects!" Mmmm, I wouldn't go that far. I'm thinking Repo Man meets Pulp Fiction meets Clerks. Something more like that.

Now, if you liked The Usual Suspects and all the convoluted plotting involved with that film, you have to try Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.

I must confess something to you. I rarely read the back of the box when I rent a video. So I sat down to watch this one and had no idea what was going on. There were more characters than I could keep track of, and the "story" (whatever it was) kept jumping restlessly from one set of people to another. I didn't want to watch it. I turned it off ... and came back to it. Then I found that if I'd just given it another five minutes, things would have begun to make sense.

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