Zyca

Starring:
Ryan Reynolds, David Suchet,
Kristin Booth, Joris Jarsky

Written by:
William Philips

Directed by:
William Philips

Alliance Atlantis Vivafilm
Rated G
94 minutes, colour
Now Playing

Last night Delg and I went to see Foolproof, a heist movie. The basic plot is Kevin (Ryan Reynolds), Samantha (Kristin Booth), and Rob (Joris Jarsky) formed a club during University they call Foolproof. Foolproof is an intellectual exercise in plotting the perfect crime. It’s fun, it’s exciting, and up until their plans for a diamond heist are stolen, it was also fairly safe. Suddenly they find themselves being blackmailed by Leo Gillette (David Suchet), a british gangster, into plotting and executing a much bigger job which must be foolproof. The company can’t know they have been stolen from or else the goods are worthless.

Foolproof is a Canadian movie which was filmed on a two million dollar budget. The plot is a breath of fresh air which has a fairly non-hollywood feel to it, Sam Roberts is on the soundtrack, the characters are too moral to carry out their perfect plans for larceny, and it takes place in Toronto — it isn’t mentioned but those red and white street cars are a Toronto specialty and the building they broke into was Toronto’s CIBC bank tower. All of those of course pale in comparison to the fact it had a Canadian Production team as well, but we’ll get into that later.

The plot for this movie is very refreshing for a heist movie. Foolproof is about three friends from university, who use gadgets and scams to pull off heists … well in theory. They never actually follow through with the robberies they plan because it would be wrong (and might ruin their fun). So why do they do this? They are smart and need an outlet for their over-active imaginations. Some people roleplay, others plan and pretend to excute perfect robberies. Writer and director William Phillips lulls the audience into thinking it’s watching a cutesy caper. He has Reynolds rip through goofy scenes in which he pretends to be a bumbling delivery guy while snapping Polaroids of security systems. This opinion of mine was torn away midway through the film and the plot twists add a whole new depth to the movie. I had one of those “Oh my god moments” when I suddenly realized what was happening … while I usually enjoy doing this, this movie caught me completely off guard (I wasn’t expecting an oh my god moment).

The turning point in this movie from bubblegum to big-time occurs when Sam is hit with a punishing blow from Leo for turning a gun on him. He overpowers her and when she fights back he beats her down. Suddenly the film doesn’t seem so fluffy, but in the style of “The Usual Suspects” it’s not until the end, when the plot twists unravel, that viewers can truly appreciate the story.

The acting is top notch and the script is excellent. With that said … they had a Canadian production crew. I’m not quite sure what to call the mess that occurs during the movie other then “Men with Booms”. That’s right, Boom mikes. Okay, the annoying bobbing in from above, unprofessional but acceptable. A little bit of cropping and/or freeze-framing the top of the frame in the editting process should be able to fix the problem but when you have a scene where half of the screen is filled with the boom mike … that’s just wrong man. Or how about the time where they had the boom mike in a scene with no talking? What was the camera man smoking? Dude, couldn’t so see the boom mike … it wasn’t exactly subtle!

I loved this movie. It was on par with De Niro’s “The Score” (2001) which was also made/set/filmed in Canada, and “The Usual Supects” (1995). But the boom mike. It was just funny how bad the edits were. HOW COULD YOU NOT HAVE NOTICED THEM! How! My God!

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