Uncle Scoopy's Fun House

The Casino Job

2009

Brainscan's comments:

Not too difficult to recreate this conversation. Guy writes a script after hanging around production companies for a few years and now he needs the capital to pay some folks to hold the camera and turn on the lights and to read from lines with as little emotion as the human mind can imagine. So he tells some schmo with the bucks that this movie is a combination of Oceans Eleven and The Sting, with one big difference in casting that has four strippers replace Newman and Redford. Out comes the checkbook and Casino Job gets made. You watch and you see a casino heist and a scam and a plot twist at the end, so there was truth to his advertising; and you see some T and some A and that should be enough to keep the finger off the FF button but, no it is not. Because you also get too little T (plenty of A, to which I say thank you very much) and way too much C, by which no I do not mean that C word (for which, the qualifier "too much" has never been applied) but rather I mean conversation. Yada, yada, yackety-yack, yammer yammer jabber. Oh for the love of Pete shut up and show us something. Action would be nice, movement would be good. Some more T would be just fine, or some more A - I don't care. Just show us rather than tell us. That is the first rule of movie making - show and don't tell - but the writer/director/producer/editor/key grip/best boy/caterer did not know it or learn it. As a result you have 20 minutes of movie crammed into 100 minutes of screen time. It is to weep.

The skinny on this movie: four strippers, played by gals who seem hesitant to show the goods so the producers hired an ex-Hefmate (Irina Voronina) to get more thoroughly nekkid, decide to rip off a guy who owns a casino and is a real pig and everyone thinks he raped one of the strippers but the cops say he said/she said so forgetaboutit. They not only steal money from him but also set him up so he goes to jail and in one of the last scenes, which is supposed to be funny (because anal rape is such a laugh riot) you see him plowed by his large cellmate, who the writer/director casts as a large black man because that will make it so much funnier, don't you see? And you think justice is served until one of the strippers reads a letter, written to her by another stripper to reveal - by telling, not showing - this was all her setting up a rich guy to steal his money. The casino owner is creep but not a criminal. The rape that started the whole ball rolling did not happen; she fucked him straight up, consensual and all, but she claimed rape so to get the others to go along with the plan. And now she intends to move on to the next rich guy and ruin his life because well, ain't that just a great way to spend the precious time you have on this planet? All of that is just icky. Add to it the several voyeur scenes and the general contempt for women displayed by the male characters and the complete contempt for men displayed by the female characters and what you got here is the stuff that sticks between your toes when you go walking barefoot on a horse ranch. Really, this movie, if one insists on calling it that, is beneath contempt. Fathoms beneath. Leagues. even. IMDb says it rates a 3.3 but I figure that's about three points too high.

Okay, fine, now for the exposure. The four main strippers are played by Amylia Joiner, Deanna Minerva, Ilsa Martinez and Julia Beatty. Ilsa played a stripper on an episode of Entourage and Julia has done a few things but for the other two this was their one moment in the cinematic sun. The longest exposure for these four is in a skinny dipping pool scene that has the virtue of four great looking women in the buff but most of the scene was shot with the camera set up in LA while the gals frolicked in Las Vegas. Long distance. Add Irina Voronina in a strip scene, a lap dance scene and a light lesbotronic scene. And one more gal, April Jorgensen, who plays a most acrobatic and playful wife of some guy the gals target for some reason to get at the real bad guy, faux rapist. Then there are a few strippers whose names are scrolled at the end but there is no way to figure out who is whom. So that's it. Man, I think Deanna's form is to die for and had they gotten her seriously stripped down a few more times and thrown in a more thorough unveiling of Ilsa and maybe another five minute of Irina prancing around in the buff I could see giving this movie a whole number rating. Let's call it a generous 1. But in its current state it and the guy what brung it to us deserve a fraction - 18th or 2/15ths and nothing higher.

Last note: I see the dude who made this movie (Christopher Hood) is on to bigger things, with bigger budgets and higher priced acting talent in a movie with the title of Dirty Dealing 3D, but the plot of this newest adventure sounds ever so like the one for Casino Job. Perhaps a studio head saw a hidden gem in Casino that escaped my attention and decided it should be re-made with something resembling talent and how i hope that Dirty Dealing has all sorts of action and sly quips and really great looking gals (strippers again) in the buff and in perfect lighting. That would make the old heart sing.

Amyllia Joiner