Where the Money Is (DVD, 2000)

I wonder how many viewers have heard of, let alone seen, "Where the Money Is"?
This kind of film is made for viewers like me who insist upon a clever plot, smart script, great acting, entertainment & when leaving the theater & a sense of excitement about what I've just experienced. Gee, I don't ask for much, do
I?

"Where the Money Is" has all of those elements & more. It is what is called a 'black comedy', meaning what's funny is serious or even sinister. The mean cynicism & explicit violence that are popular in bigger budget box office busters are the absences that are what draws in the presence of an audience who demands more sophistication from films.

This film is set in small town, Oregon, or anywhere USA. The plot seems quite simple: a big time bank robber, Henry Manning (Paul Newman) fakes a stroke to get out of prison. He winds up in a hospital where Nurse Carol MacKay (Linda Fiorentino) is assigned to take care of him. Her husband, Wayne MacKay (Dermot Mulroney), & Carol were popular high school sweethearts who married right after graduating.

The wicked fun begins when Nurse Carol suspects that Manning is faking. Carol was an inventive teen, so she's even moreso as an adult when she sets out to determine if the elderly bank robber is playing her for a fool. When she pushes her patient into a body of water, he conceeds, revealing that she's found him out. However, rather than his exposure as an imposter being the end of the game, it's the beginning between a master & a novice.

"Where the Money Is" screenwriters Max Frye, Topper Lilien & Carroll Cartwright created an ingenius script of understated comedy & crime. Directed by Marek Kanievska, the actors don't play their roles too seriously. In fact, this film's purpose is for everyone involved to be amused by situations that could have been made into a tension building suspense.

That suspense would have come after Nurse Carol convinces robber Manning to take her on as a partner in crime to pull off one more heist--primarily for the sport of it. Seems her life is a bit too mundane, so now that the golden opportunity of getting away with doing something deviant with a pro has fallen at her feet, the temptation is too enticing to resist.

Will Wayne go along with it or know about it at all? Will the prison escapee want to risk being caught, locked up this time with the key thrown away forever? And will a successful enough career woman have guts enough to go through with her scheme?

Mind you, the comedy is like an under-current. The suspense isn't nail-biting, either. That's the perfection of the whole film project coming together & working. It's not too dark, it's not too light. Because of these three lead actors playing their roles just right, there is no need to suspend disbelief: they are all quite believable.

I walked away from this film believing that I could see myself in Nurse Carol's predicament or Wayne's, either one. Manning really does represent the idea of a delicious taboo temptation. One that I bet just about everyone has given some sort of thought about whenever sitting in a car beside an amored truck in front of a bank!~