Coming from David Levien and Brian Koppelman, the same pair that wrote Rounders, no one was surprised that Knockaround Guys is another movie about young guys caught up in the underworld. But Guys does not have anyone like Matt Damon or Edward Norton to play the young men struggling with The Life and no femme like Famke Jansen to add spice. In the end, the pair’s script and direction is pulled under by overly pretenscious speeches and a simplistic plot.
It’s all about putting words in the mouths of stereotypical characters. Barry Pepper is a mob boss’s son, whose father doesn’t give him the respect he craves, Seth Green and Andrew Davoli are also second generation hoods not living up to dad, and Vin Diesel is the muscleman who ‘understands’ the truth of their path better than any of the others. John Malkovitch is Pepper’s evil, slick uncle, chafing under the thumb of Dennis Hopper. A bunch of no-name actors play the hicks who get in the way of Malkovitch’s plan to flip the pecking order and none stand out. Might have expected Levien and Koppleman to use the wide open spaces of the Montana location a little more attractively but that didn’t happen either.
Not really worth the time
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