The Whole Nine Yards
USA 2000
Reviewed by Xan Brooks
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Montreal, the present. American dentist 'Oz' Oseransky strikes up an unlikely friendship with his neighbour Jimmy Tudeski, a hitman hiding out from Chicago gangsters. Oz is blackmailed by his loveless wife Sophie to travel to Chicago and shop Tudeski to crime boss Janni Gogolak. There Oz is intercepted by Frankie Figs, a mob heavy nominally attached to the Gogolak gang but really in cahoots with Tudeski. Oz also sleeps with Tudeski's wife Cynthia.
Back in Montreal, Tudeski hatches a plan to lure Gogolak to Canada where he will kill him and Cynthia to get sole access to a $10-million bank account to which they are all signatories. Oz is roped in as a co-conspirator, as is Oz's assistant Jill, a wannabe contract killer. Meanwhile Sophie recruits an assassin, Hanson, to kill her husband. In a shoot out, Tudeski kills Gogolak, his goons and Hanson, actually an undercover cop. Sophie is picked up by the police who charge her with Hanson's murder. Tudeski learns that Oz has slept with Cynthia and vows revenge. To make amends, Oz comes up with a scheme in which he restructures Hanson's dental work and burns the body to make it appear as if Tudeski has died. Realising that Cynthia is in love with Oz, Tudeski makes her a wedding gift of $1m from Gogolak's fund of $10m. He kills the unreliable Figs and heads for a new life in the Caribbean with Jill. Oz asks Cynthia to marry him.
Review
The Whole Nine Yards' director Jonathan Lynn rose to fame in the mid 80s as the co-creator of the acerbic BBC sitcom Yes, Minister, a success he subsequently parlayed into a lucrative career directing such Hollywood comedies as My Cousin Vinny and The Distinguished Gentleman. But all the while something was missing, some vital storytelling punch either lost in transit or sapped by the Los Angeles sun. With The Whole Nine Yards, the Californication of Lynn looks complete. This polished comedy-thriller is almost spookily impersonal. It bears the hallmarks of a film that's been test-previewed out of all existence. In the end, you feel anybody could have made it.
Not that Lynn's film is ever less than professional. It's more crisply paced and well conceived than his previous two directorial efforts (the flop comedies Sgt. Bilko and Trial and Error). There's also a sleek central performance from Bruce Willis, who brings a little star charisma to the otherwise threadbare character of louche hitman Jimmy Tudeski. Matthew Perry likewise copes adequately as putz dentist 'Oz' Oseransky, though the role requires him to do little more than splutter into his dry Martini and gaze on horrified from the sidelines.
But in all other respects, The Whole Nine Yards remains cynically underdrawn. Screenwriter Mitchell Kapner equates convulsive plot twists with ingenious plotting; the film's procession of double- and treble-crosses is the cinematic equivalent of jump-starting a faulty car. Moreover, it conspires to waste Michael Clarke Duncan as a jovial thug and squanders actresses with shameless abandon. Rosanna Arquette is relegated to the role of a dubious, ball-cutting bitch as Oz's wife and Natasha Henstridge is little more than a depersonalised object of desire as Tudeski's glacial estranged wife. Even Amanda Peet, whose role as an aspirant assassin initially appears promising, winds up short-changed. Her part in Tudeski's plan to take out crime boss Gogolak involves wandering naked around the house in order to befuddle the baddies. After she's just lolled out of a window to take a pot-shot at an intruder, one of the thugs remarks "I can't think of nothing finer than a fine naked woman holding a gun." It's the one line of dialogue you sense the film's makers really believe in.
Credits
- Director
- Jonathan Lynn
- Producers
- David Willis
- Allan Kaufman
- Screenplay
- Mitchell Kapner
- Director of Photography
- David Franco
- Editor
- Tom Lewis
- Production Designer
- David L. Snyder
- Music
- Randy Edelman
- ©Nine Yards Productions, LLC
- Production Companies
- Morgan Creek Productions, Inc and Franchise Pictures, LLC present a Rational Packaging Films production in association with Lansdown Films
- Executive Producers
- Elie Samaha
- Andrew Stevens
- Co-producers
- Don Carmody
- James Holt
- Tracee Stanley
- Line Producer
- Mike Drake
- Associate Producer
- Stephen Eads
- Production Co-ordinators
- Sofie Handfield
- Marie Quesnel
- Unit Production Manager
- Micheline Garant
- Unit Manager
- Stéphane Falardeau
- Location Managers
- Pierre Brunet
- Erik Snyder
- Post-production Supervisor
- Eric Bergman
- 2nd Unit Director
- David L. Snyder
- Assistant Directors
- Myron Hoffert
- Carl Desjardins
- Michelle Benoît
- Mandy Ketcheson
- Chris Early
- 2nd Unit:
- Stephane Byl
- Script Supervisor
- Marie Beaulieu
- Casting
- Nancy Nayor
- Canadian:
- Elite Casting
- Nadia Rona
- 2nd Unit Director
of Photography/
2nd Camera Operator - Robert Guertin
- Digital Effects
- Pacific Title/Mirage
- Digiscope
- Special Effects Co-ordinator
- Ryal Cosgrove
- Physical Effects
- Cineffects Inc
- Art Director
- André Chamberland
- Set Decorator
- Mary Lynn Deachman
- Drafting Artists
- Caroline Alder
- Rick Shean
- Costume Designer
- Edi Giguére
- Wardrobe Master
- Art Reasonover
- Key Make-up Artist
- Clair Van Der Elst
- Make-up Artist
- Catherine Lavoie
- Special Effects Make-up
- Texa FX Group
- Hairstylist
- Peggy Semtob
- Hairdressers
- Johanne Hansen
- Nathalie Garon
- Titles/Opticals
- Pacific Title/Mirage
- Music Supervisor
- Spring Aspers
- Music Co-ordinators
- Bronwen Boyan
- Gary Gold
- Music Editors
- E. Gedney Webb
- Temp:
- Craig Pettigrew
- Score Recorder/Mixer
- Elton Ahi
- Soundtrack
- "Mon Paradis" - Meredith Marshall; "I Don't Worry about a Thing" - Mose Allison; Mozart's "Eine kleine Nachtmusik" - Vienna Mozart Ensemble; "Cafe" - Gary Gold, Tom Scott, Reggie McBridge, Daniel Weinstein, Tom McMorran; "Rue aux fleurs" - Pierre Solange Musette Ensemble; "Tenth Avenue Tango" - Bruce Willis; "I Miss You Most on Saturdays" - Gary Gold, Tom Scott, Reggie McBridge, Tom McMorran; "Autumn Leaves (Les feuilles mortes)", "They All Laughed" - The Charlie Biddle Trio, featuring Stephanie Biddle; "Moanin'" - Charles Mingus; "I Wanna Rock", "Slow Burn" - The Up Top Orchestra
- Sound Mixer
- Don Cohen
- Re-recording Mixers
- Ken S. Polk
- Christian P. Minkler
- Supervising Sound Editor
- Michael Hilkene
- Supervising Dialogue Editor
- Bob Fitzgerald
- Sound Effects Editors
- David Grimaldi
- Randall Guth
- Douglas Parker
- ADR
- Recordist:
- Rick Canelli
- Mixer:
- Thomas J. O'Connell
- Editor:
- Julie Feiner
- Foley
- Artists:
- Dan O'Connell
- John Cucci
- Recordist:
- Linda Lew
- Mixer:
- Jim Ashwill
- Editor:
- Christopher T. Welch
- Stunt Co-ordinator
- Minor Mustain
- Film Extract
- Key Largo (1948)
- Cast
- Bruce Willis
- Jimmy 'The Tulip' Tudeski
- Matthew Perry
- Nicholas 'Oz' Oseransky
- Rosanna Arquette
- Sophie
- Michael Clarke Duncan
- Frankie Figs
- Natasha Henstridge
- Cynthia
- Amanda Peet
- Jill
- Kevin Pollak
- Janni Gogolak
- Harland Williams
- Agent Hanson
- Carmen Ferlan
- Sophie's mom
- Serge Christianssens
- Mr Boulez
- Renée Madelaine Le Guerrier
- waitress
- Jean-Guy Bouchard
- mover
- Howard Bilerman
- Dave Martin
- Johnny Goar
- Hungarian hood
- Deano Clavet
- Polish pug
- Stephanie Biddle
- jazz singer
- Charles Biddle
- bass player
- Geoff Lapp
- pianist
- Gary Gold
- drummer
- Robert Burns
- Mr Tourette
- France Arbour
- Mrs Boulez
- Sean Devine
- Sergeant Buchanan
- Richard Jutras
- Agent Morrissey
- Mark Camacho
- Joanna Noyes
- interrogators
- John Moore
- bank manager
- Certificate
- 15
- Distributor
- Warner Bros Distributors (UK)
- 8,899 feet
- 98 minutes 53 seconds
- Dolby Digital/DTS/SDDS
- In Colour
- Prints by
- DeLuxe Laboratories