Review: Best Laid Plans

When the noirish Best Laid Plans begins, Nick (Alessandro Nivola) is looking out of a window. He is inside a bar called the Nocturne. The expression on his face is ambiguous -- is he waiting for someone or does he just want to get out? Perhaps it's the latter --his drinking companion, an old college acquaintance named Bryce (Josh Brolin) who just blew back into the small town of Tropica, strikes one as a potential lout who cheerfully talks about wife-swapping.

Then in walks a pretty blond young woman (Reese Witherspoon) whom Bryce immediately notices. The camera follows her as she walks down the length of the bar and then the scene fades to black. It is a brief but haunting shot that pulses ominously. Indeed, the next time the girl appears, she is slightly bloodied, gagged and handcuffed to the pool table in the amazing house that Bryce is looking after. What is going on?

Nick has no clue. When he left the bar, Bryce and the girl were in a deep flirtation dance. Too deep, the now sobered-up Bryce explains. The two returned to the house, had sex and the girl began threatening to press charges against him. Her ID indicates she's a minor. Even if he didn't rape her, which Bryce doesn't believe he did, he could still be charged with statutory rape. He could lose everything -- his job as an English professor, his family name, his reputation. In essence, he'd be a dead ender like Nick. Bryce won't let the girl go.

All Nick wants to do is let the girl go. But not for the reasons one would think. "We're fucked," he tells her when they're all alone. "You're telling me," she throws back tartly. What follows explains how this situation came about.

Director Mike Barker navigates Ted Griffin's serpentine screenplay as best he can, but Griffin's work can often be as misguided as Nick and Bryce's friendship. Best Laid Plans could have used a little more malice or spite and the class differences between Nick and Bryce could have been more pointed. Nick picks Bryce because he happens to be in the right place at the wrong time -- it's desperation but it's also a psychological vengeance. Bryce has left Tropico, he has a career, a reputation, a relatively healthy bank account. And he's taken it all for granted.

The beefy Brolin, a potentially dynamite leading man if given half a chance, maneuvers his character's difficulties by inserting a comic undercurrent to Bryce's frenzy. Witherspoon continues to prove herself a class apart from the post-pubescent brood littering the movie screens. Though her femme is not fatale, she does possess the weary melancholy that is the badge of any noir woman. Like Brolin, Nivola exudes much untapped potential. He is a deft, brooding performer, a little like Brando circa On the Waterfront though perhaps not as fully developed.

It is this trio that manages to elevate this sub-par noir. For example, Nivola and Witherspoon make one understand the underlying connection between their characters. When Nick first sees her as Bryce's captive, he is tremendously solicitous and concerned. More than a stranger should be. Nivola's inquisitive gentleness and Witherspoon's armored shame brings the viewers on their side and prepares the groundwork for the rest of the film.

Best Laid Plans

Directed by: Mike Barker

Written by: Ted Griffin

Starring: Alessandro Nivola, Reese Witherspoon, Josh Brolin, Terrence Howard