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actors Bruce Willis Rosanna Arquette Natasha Henstridge Matthew Perry director Jonathan Lynn location Montreal outtake Originally scheduled for summer release, Warner Brothers apparently moved up the date to get a jump on another Willis film, Kid, that is set to open mid-year. |
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for someone who is both a successful
and popular movie star, Bruce Willis certainly takes a lot of chances.
With every action hit like Die Hard or Armageddon, Willis also does a
quirky comedy like Death Becomes Her, or a quiet character study like
his Vietnam vet in Norman Jewison's In Country.
Last year, Willis appeared in the mega-hit The Sixth Sense, yet he also took a huge leap of faith starring in Alan Rudolph's adaptation of the '70s cult novel Breakfast of Champions. "The studios want me running
in the streets with a gun shouting, 'Don't do that!'" Willis
explains. "But some movies let me be an actor again." Since
Willis considers himself an actor - as well as a star - it should be of
no surprise that in The Whole Nine Yards he gets The film is a black comedy about a hit man (Willis) who is running from the mob. Under the cover of the witness protection program, he and his wife (Natasha Henstridge) move into the suburbs, next door to Oz (Matthew Perry), a financially strapped dentist, and his constantly nagging wife, Phoebe (Rosanna Arquette). When the neighbors find out who the new couple on the block really is, Phoebe coaxes Oz to rat out the hit man to get a big payout from the gangsters who want him dead. Movies like The Whole Nine Yards
are often called "actor's holidays" because the whole filming
experience is so much fun it doesn't feel like work. Aside from Willis
having a lark, the other actors are no less on holiday, either. Henstridge, after extending her deadly embrace in the camp horror-comedy Species, and hot-footing with Jean-Claude Van Damme in Maximum Risk, is no stranger to quirky comedy. Rosanna Arquette has also had fun playing sexy, sometimes manipulative women, as she aptly demonstrated in Martin Scorsese's After Hours and David Cronenberg's Crash. Matthew Perry is also not alien to kidding himself. Three To Tango, which also starred Neve Campbell and Dylan McDermott, is ample proof of this. And The Whole Nine Yards is
definitely familiar territory for director Jonathan Lynn, who not only
made hit comedies like Greedy and Trial and Error, but also that other
mob-related satire, My Cousin Vinny. And he'd probably agree that part
of what makes black comedies enjoyable is that they make us laugh at our
own worst impulses. If they work, we usually chuckle... and cringe. In
The Whole Nine Yards, it attempts to go the distance on both counts. |
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