Oddly enough, when it's a dark crime caper with some comedic/absurdist elements, the movie actually works pretty well. There are stakes, people are getting killed, and there are Nazis being evil...there are some genuinely exciting sequences in this movie.
Then Dan Akyroyd's "Multiple Personality Disorder" rears it's ugly head again and the whole thing turns into a farce. You think his impressions of pop culture characters are supposed to be funny...and they are... until (here's the spoiler) you learn that he developed this MPD after a gang captured him and tortured him so severely he almost died.
Yes, that is his actual back-story in this movie.
How are you supposed to laugh at that? If they'd played this as a mostly straight movie with some jokes thrown in, it would have been fine. If Ellis had been what he was originally presented as: a brilliant detective with a broken mind trying to claw his way back into functionality, that would have worked. Hey, when Dan Akryoyd isn't mugging, he actually gives a pretty touching performance. This whole thing would have gone down as a dark but functional crime flick.
Bur someone decided this had to be a "comedy." A comedy with Nazis, torture, and murder in it. And that killed the flick.
Still, somethings have to be seen to be believed.
Then Dan Akyroyd's "Multiple Personality Disorder" rears it's ugly head again and the whole thing turns into a farce. You think his impressions of pop culture characters are supposed to be funny...and they are... until (here's the spoiler) you learn that he developed this MPD after a gang captured him and tortured him so severely he almost died.
Yes, that is his actual back-story in this movie.
How are you supposed to laugh at that? If they'd played this as a mostly straight movie with some jokes thrown in, it would have been fine. If Ellis had been what he was originally presented as: a brilliant detective with a broken mind trying to claw his way back into functionality, that would have worked. Hey, when Dan Akryoyd isn't mugging, he actually gives a pretty touching performance. This whole thing would have gone down as a dark but functional crime flick.
Bur someone decided this had to be a "comedy." A comedy with Nazis, torture, and murder in it. And that killed the flick.
Still, somethings have to be seen to be believed.