Back in 1969, Hollywood made its first crack at Elmore Leonard's story, The Big Bounce, starring Ryan O'Neal, Leigh Taylor Young and Lee Grant. It bombed. The second attempt, thirty-five years later, hasn't made a great deal of progress. The Big Bounce centers around Jack Ryan (Owen Wilson, The Royal Tenenbaums), a genial small time crook, who hits his foreman in the head with a baseball bat. He then befriends local judge and vacation property owner Walter Crewes (Morgan Freeman, Bruce Almighty) and his old boss' mistress Nancy Hayes (Sara Foster) after his short jail sentence. Ryan begins working for Crewes, and becomes friends with Hayes at which point she recruits him for the big scam, which is to con his old boss, Ray Ritchie (Gary Sinise, The Human Stain), out of $200,000.

Though Wilson's comic nonchalance and goofiness is enjoyable, the plot in which he becomes mixed up is about as disorganized as my laundry hamper and proves too deep for him to stay afloat. Also, the Oscar-caliber Freeman, sitting back and playing dominoes with cameos by Willie Nelson and Harry Dean Stanton, seems all too ironic. That's what this movie seemed to be, in the end-everyone sitting around a table, making loose bets and drinking spiced rum. There is one scene where Freeman's performance is particularly notable, though sadly, it has nothing to do with advancement of the plot. Rather, there is a scene near the end of the movie where the camera focuses on Freeman's face as he gives a very neutral expression. Yet it expresses a feeling of quiet resignation to the fumbling plot that has just unfolded, as if to say, "Why am I here?"

Most of the actors in the movie only had a few scenes, presumably being flown in for twenty minutes of actual filming. Charlie Sheen (Being John Malkovich) plays the crony of Richie for a few scenes and makes a fool of himself as an uncharacteristically geeky, aging wingman, as opposed to his usual, more masculine caricature.

The Oscar-nominated Sinise, though he plays a character fairly central to the plot, makes only a few appearances. We see him first as the cutthroat Hawaiian businessman, ordering around his mistress and not caring for her feelings. His mistress sums up his character when she exclaims, "Oh Ray Ritchie, you're so ruthless." Next, he drives around in a Bentley, continuing to look sinister, and waves his middle finger at Hawaiian natives protesting his construction of property on a local sacred burial ground.

The rest of the time, one might assume that the actors were getting paid millions of dollars to sit around and enjoy the beautiful Hawaiian scenery. And sadly, director George Armitage was not able to portray that well at all. Even with the movie completely devoid of plot, the filming could have been a showcase for the Hawaiian landscape, or even for the surf culture. Yet, both the scenes of the landscape and the surfing scenes themselves were done with a total lack of imagination or thought. One particular scene in which Armitage uses a dark filter to film the beach, taking away the striking color of the sand, sun and water stands out in my mind. The movie, at times, seems more like the camcorder leftovers of a Hollywood beach party in Hawaii, than anything remotely resembling a movie.

In the end, the movie comes to some degree of resolution. And by resolution, I mean that audience has no clue exactly what has just transpired, but we are supposed to accept it for what it is. With the going price of a movie in the theater escalating by the day, a suggestion to anyone who has any sort of desire to see this movie: Rent it when it comes out on video, rethink your taste in movies, or maybe go read a good book.