Crime Spree

Crime Spree
Harvey Keitel, Gerard Depardieu, Abe Vigoda, Johnny Hallyday
Directed by Brad Mirman
Alliance Atlantis
2003
100 Minutes

Crime Spree is a movie about inept wiseguys from France that, like Guinness beer does not travel well. Canadian and British money financed a crime flick about five French hoods who go to Chicago to burglarize a house. Writer slash director Brad Mirman, famous for not much almost had a decent movie on his hands but dropped the dime on this one.

The story is French Elvis Johnny Hallyday, Gerard Depardieu (Green Card), singer Renaud and other French actors who all do imitations of Inspector Clouseau accent wise have the FBI, the Chicago Police Department, and a Latino gang after them after they pull a heist at a mafia underboss’ home.

This would be crime comedy has a couple of funny bait and switch scenes but otherwise it is too long. Action wise there is a really cool scene shot from an overhead cam of the crooks blasting their way from hotel room communicating door to communicating door to escape Mafia boss Harvey Keitel’s henchmen. An inside joke is at the beginning of the flick when Renaud and Johnny Hallyday switch radio stations back and forth because they are playing their song, literally.

The real mystery here is what Harvey Keitel, the Don, is doing in this doesn’t quite know what it wants to be film. The money must have been good or something. Abe Vigoda of Barney Miller fame plays the old Chicago crime boss whose respect for tradition would make Don Corleone proud and it is always a pleasure to see Fish in anything.

Supposedly “Special” features include, oh wow, trailers and, gee whiz, DVD scene selection. How generous of Alliance Atlantis to include scene selection on a freaking DVD. Next, the studio will claim the DVD comes with special clamshell storage genuine plastic case. There are also deleted scenes but a lot of the scenes in the movie itself should have been put in that section.

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