Big Nothing draws on inspiration from Sam Raimi's 1998 film A Simple Plan, among other things, as it follows this everyday and seemingly ordinary working class guy get involved in a noir inspired dream situation. It's the sort of situation that could, and in fact very much does, quickly become the absolute opposite – a noir inspired nightmare. This is achieved through a chain of events that, unlike A Simple Plan, draw on the post-Tarantino ideation of very black humour delivered through a variety of scenes that revolve around death, destruction and humour. I don't think the film is as good as A Simple Plan, if only for the fact A Simple Plan felt more grounded and was more subtle in its development and fleshing out of its characters and predicaments; but Big Nothing is a nourishing and devilishly good ride of genre basics and bleak but effective writing.
The film sees three relatively hapless leads, predominantly in David Schwimmer's Charlie but additionally in Simon Pegg's Gus and Alice Eve's 'Miss Teen Oklahoma' character named Josie McBroom. Charlie, a smart and educated man, gets what he perceives as a low-end job as a call centre worker to support his state trooper wife Penelope (McElhone) and young daughter. His work station neighbours that of Gus, a fast talking and smooth guy out to blackmail a local priest who, he claims, has a history of visiting certain websites he shouldn't have done. One night, Gus shares this plan with total stranger Charlie in a bar, but upon overhearing this plan, third lead Josie gets in on the act as the ever-obligatory, but in a nice sense, femme fatale.
There are a few things in the opening that raise eyebrows, but tactfully so. The casting of essentially British acting talent in Pegg and Eve, even if they're playing Americans, to act as foils to Schwimmer is a cute notion in the sense it's using whatever unease or uncertainty might lie in the relationship between Britain and America precisely for this film as a means of noir-inspired entertainment. The film has its characters act in a deliberately care-free and somewhat daft manner, most evidently when Charlie thinks he puts a customer on hold, insults them and then realises they were not on hold and the supervisor heard the whole thing. If you don't see that coming after Gus executes it moments earlier, flawlessly, then you're not trying hard enough. Charlie and Gus then go on to discuss what will be the film's initial incident in a very public place; something that leads to the latching on of Josie. Things go wrong in the early section, but it acts as a means to get across a certain degree of incompetence on the character's behalf; that these people are not suited for the task they're taking on. The film knowingly pays homage to its own set up when one character points out that two others may well have been reading 'Blackmail for Dummies'.
The presence of Charlie's partner Penelope, as this character of law enforcement, initially acts against the film; as an element that you feel will become rather obviously involved when her husband takes up illegal activity. But she's kept away from the narrative for most of the time and adopts a role as an off screen presence, forever threatening. If the writers for this project have taken inspiration from anything in regards to her particular character, then it is the calm; methodical and delicate archetype of Fargo's Marge Gunderson, as a figure of good but vulnerability amongst all the evil and wrong-doing that surrounds her. The film is littered with characters that are eliminated just as easily as they are introduced; fast and loose lines of dialogue, spat like venom on the characters' behalf, a particular favourite of mine being a spin on the overly familiar "read my lips......." phrase.
So if we learn anything from this, it's that 'Tarantino knock offs' or films inspired by Tarantino's ever-moulded together mesh of crime and comedy can work quite well. Big Nothing isn't a film that makes crime particularly appealing, or even sexy despite its frenetic and entertaining aesthetic, as much as it does make the prospect of getting into crime quite alluring as this seemingly fool-proof and straight forward plan spirals more and more out of control. The film isn't a glorification of crime, one particular character's downfall is brought on by an attack of guilt and realisation of who he is and what he has, but more importantly what he has to loose, while the quite tragic epilogue acts as a means of hammering home the point.
The whole situation is practically uphill from the moment Charlie disposes of a body that he thought was dead but wasn't quite, resulting in a series of scenes involving either death or total bewilderment, often both coming to the forefront at once and giving us a comedic spin. Big Nothing is a twisted but frighteningly good time. It provides more than enough in the basics for both noir and comedy, as genres, for a recommendation, and delivers this with an entertaining narrative that comes complete with twists and turns. The film zips along, without ever feeling overpowering, nor that particularly bad.
The film sees three relatively hapless leads, predominantly in David Schwimmer's Charlie but additionally in Simon Pegg's Gus and Alice Eve's 'Miss Teen Oklahoma' character named Josie McBroom. Charlie, a smart and educated man, gets what he perceives as a low-end job as a call centre worker to support his state trooper wife Penelope (McElhone) and young daughter. His work station neighbours that of Gus, a fast talking and smooth guy out to blackmail a local priest who, he claims, has a history of visiting certain websites he shouldn't have done. One night, Gus shares this plan with total stranger Charlie in a bar, but upon overhearing this plan, third lead Josie gets in on the act as the ever-obligatory, but in a nice sense, femme fatale.
There are a few things in the opening that raise eyebrows, but tactfully so. The casting of essentially British acting talent in Pegg and Eve, even if they're playing Americans, to act as foils to Schwimmer is a cute notion in the sense it's using whatever unease or uncertainty might lie in the relationship between Britain and America precisely for this film as a means of noir-inspired entertainment. The film has its characters act in a deliberately care-free and somewhat daft manner, most evidently when Charlie thinks he puts a customer on hold, insults them and then realises they were not on hold and the supervisor heard the whole thing. If you don't see that coming after Gus executes it moments earlier, flawlessly, then you're not trying hard enough. Charlie and Gus then go on to discuss what will be the film's initial incident in a very public place; something that leads to the latching on of Josie. Things go wrong in the early section, but it acts as a means to get across a certain degree of incompetence on the character's behalf; that these people are not suited for the task they're taking on. The film knowingly pays homage to its own set up when one character points out that two others may well have been reading 'Blackmail for Dummies'.
The presence of Charlie's partner Penelope, as this character of law enforcement, initially acts against the film; as an element that you feel will become rather obviously involved when her husband takes up illegal activity. But she's kept away from the narrative for most of the time and adopts a role as an off screen presence, forever threatening. If the writers for this project have taken inspiration from anything in regards to her particular character, then it is the calm; methodical and delicate archetype of Fargo's Marge Gunderson, as a figure of good but vulnerability amongst all the evil and wrong-doing that surrounds her. The film is littered with characters that are eliminated just as easily as they are introduced; fast and loose lines of dialogue, spat like venom on the characters' behalf, a particular favourite of mine being a spin on the overly familiar "read my lips......." phrase.
So if we learn anything from this, it's that 'Tarantino knock offs' or films inspired by Tarantino's ever-moulded together mesh of crime and comedy can work quite well. Big Nothing isn't a film that makes crime particularly appealing, or even sexy despite its frenetic and entertaining aesthetic, as much as it does make the prospect of getting into crime quite alluring as this seemingly fool-proof and straight forward plan spirals more and more out of control. The film isn't a glorification of crime, one particular character's downfall is brought on by an attack of guilt and realisation of who he is and what he has, but more importantly what he has to loose, while the quite tragic epilogue acts as a means of hammering home the point.
The whole situation is practically uphill from the moment Charlie disposes of a body that he thought was dead but wasn't quite, resulting in a series of scenes involving either death or total bewilderment, often both coming to the forefront at once and giving us a comedic spin. Big Nothing is a twisted but frighteningly good time. It provides more than enough in the basics for both noir and comedy, as genres, for a recommendation, and delivers this with an entertaining narrative that comes complete with twists and turns. The film zips along, without ever feeling overpowering, nor that particularly bad.