Starring: Bruce Willis, Matthew Perry
Director: Jonathan Lynn
Rated: M15
The Whole Nine Yards is a slight film and attempts to be a pastiche of the Hollywood gangster genre. Starring Matthew Perry from TV’s Friends and Bruce Willis, this film is doing very big business among young people.
Perry plays a Montreal dentist with an over-bearing wife and a large mortgage.
When Willis, who plays Jimmy the Tulip, a professional hit man on the run from his last employer, moves in next door, Perry’s wife sees an opportunity to make some money by claiming the bounty on Willis’ head.
The film tries to avoid responsibility for its questionable morality because, from beginning to end, it is a satire on the traditional gangster film – where relationships count for nothing, life is cheap and violence is glorified. This crazy value system is sent up in The Whole Nine Yards.
This movie, in pretending not to take itself seriously, highlights how seriously we should take films that do not pay attention to the consequences of the violence they portray.
