This is an attempt at a sassy girl action comedy but, despite its interesting concept, becomes a tedious melodrama with a few hand guns thrown in. It lacks tension, credibility and, most of all, humor. It tries too hard to be what it’s supposed to be.
Stephanie Plum (Katherine Heigl) has been unemployed for six months and, with no other option, goes to work for her cousin, Vinny ( Patrick Fischler) as a Recovery Agent at his bail bonding company. When Stephanie is given a list of people who have skipped bail she sees that her old flame Joe Morelli (Jason O’Mara) is right at the top, and whoever returns him to custody will receive a bounty of $50,000. Stephanie decides to take him on, convincing herself that she’s doing it for the money and absolutely not because he deflowered her when she was 17 and never saw her again.
Despite Morelli being a suspected murderer, Stephanie totters off in her short skirt and stilettos believing that she will be able to bring him in, even though she has no training and is not even toting a gun. She finds Morelli straight away, re-introduces herself and tells him to accompany her to the nearest police station. He of course dismisses her as being too dumb to take seriously and, unfortunately, the audience will undoubtedly do the same. This is a 30-something woman who is divorced and lives in her own apartment in the city – how could she be this naive? It’s also equally unbelievable that a wanted killer could be so easily found by an amateur but still be beyond the reach of the police.
The rest of the film is littered with equally unlikely situations, and we traipse back and fore to her family, to Vinny’s, to her apartment, with only one little explosion to liven things up. There are some particularly irritating scenes with two hookers who overdo the finger-waving as they talk the jibe and they become two more characters to add to the line-up of people who we have all seen a million times before. Another who could be added to this list is Ranger (Daniel Sunjata), Stephanie’s mentor, who pops in and out for the convenience of the plot and whose role should clearly have been combined with Vinny’s to give it some kind of purpose.
The finale is, of course, as clunky as the rest of the tale, with a murderer making a confessional monologue, completely unprompted, all conveniently taped by a secret recorder. It reminded me of an amateur radio show I once listened to, which had the unforgettable line “this gun I’m holding in my right hand is loaded”. It was so bad it was funny, but in this film I didn’t laugh at all. Not even when I was supposed to.
Based on the novel by Janet Evanovich.
RELEASE DATES
Israel – 26 January 2012
Russia – 26 January 2012
Singapore – 26 January 2012
USA – 27 January 2012
Greece – 2 February 2012
Estonia – 3 February 2012
France – 8 February 2012
Australia – 16 February 2012
Argentina – 23 February 2012
UK – 24 February 2012
Belgium – 29 February 2012
Portugal – 8 March 2012
Denmark – 15 March 2012
Hong Kong – 15 March 2012
Brazil – 16 March 2012
Lithuania – 30 March 2012
Germany – 19 April 2012
Netherlands – 26 April 2012