# Gun Shy (2000)

### reviewed by
Harvey S. Karten

    GUN SHY

     Reviewed by Harvey Karten
     Hollywood Pictures
     Director: Eric Blakeney
     Writer: Eric Blakeney
     Cast: Liam Neeson, Oliver Platt, Sandra Bullock, Jose
    Zuniga, Richard Schiff, Mary McCormack, Mitch Pileggi

Reviewing "Eye of the Beholder" which opened one week before "Gun Shy," some critics expressed their wit in the following way: "When The Eye accidentally witnesses Joanna in the process of committing a murder, he becomes instantly smitten with her. Who wouldn't be?" A similar event occurs in Eric Blakeney's "Gun Shy." Nurse Judy Tipp (Sandra Bullock) administers a barium enema to DEA agent Charlie (Liam Neeson), and aggressively pursues him for a date. Who wouldn't? "Gun Shy," a generally unfunny parody of the wise-guys genre done with greater style in Kelly Makin's "Mickey Blue Eyes," features Liam Neeson in an allegedly comic role of an 18-year veteran of anti-drug police work who dreams of retiring to a condo with an oceanfront view. Blakeney, noting the success of recent comic pictures like Harold Ramis's "Analyze This," capitalizes on the current fashion of showing heroes and mobsters who are psychologically vulnerable--who are just plain scared and who are playing the game with an eye to getting out of the business. But "Gun Shy" substitutes some bathroom humor for the elan of "Mickey Blue Eyes." He also shoehorns a romantic interlude that belongs in another movie and which seems to exist only because Sandra Bullock, its producer, sadly thinks she can make chemistry with Liam Neeson. As though the romantic breaks are not enough to divert our attention from the principal, unamusing and forced storyline, Blakeney--whose credits include occasional writing for "Cagney and Lacey" and "Moonlighting" and who is scheduled to direct the forthcoming "Without Apparent Motive"--throws in some Ramis-style sessions on the couch, none of which up to the humor of just about any of Bob Newhart's late, great TV episodes.

Borrowing a theme from Ben Younger's feature "Boiler Room" (about a group of day traders in the stock market), Blakeney's story deals with a couple of gay Colombian drug lords and a family of wise guys who employ yuppie-ish Howard (Paul Ben-Victor) in a scheme to manipulate prices on the commodities market. They buy up enough soybeans to raise prices and to convert forty million dollars in cash to billions in securities. Mobsters Fidel (Jose Zuniga) and Estuvio (Michael Delorenzo) team up with the reluctant Fulvio (Oliver Platt) and are pursued in turn by the disinclined Drug Enforcement Agency officer Charlie.

"Gun Shy" relies on two comic themes. One is Charlie's fear of criminals, justified enough since he had come within seconds of being blown away by an Uzi and had witnessed the execution of his partner just before a team of agents storm into the blood-soaked room to clean up the gangsters. Charlie's psychosomatic stomach problems lead him into the capable hands of Judy Tipp, who assures him that his abdomen is reacting strictly to his anxieties and does what she can to show him a good time before his anticipated execution by the mob. The other is the vaudevillian antics of the cartoonish gangsters, principally Fulvio, who is said to be able to read a person's soul through his eyes and who at one point engages in an allegedly amusing staring contest with Charlie--who has infiltrated the mob.

The politically incorrect jokes are of the nature of Fidel's going ballistic when he hears that Howard has bought soybeans with the gang's money. "What am I, a beaner?" he shouts, dismissing any possibility that his Colombia family ever went for the stereotyped food popular with Hispanics. The gross-out humor includes a joke that a gangster makes about Fulvio's prostate in the obligatory men's room scene, for which he gets his testicles shot off. To add to the cliches, Charlie participates in group therapy sessions with the uptight analysands of psychiatrist Dr. Bleckner (Michael Mantell), though Fulvio--who is henpecked by his bitchy, chain-smoking wife Gloria (Mary McCormack), is obviously in greater need of the doctor's couch.

Neither romantic nor dark, neither humorous nor satiric, "Gun Shy" tries to be "Bob Newhart," "Goodfellas," "Mickey Blue Eyes" and "Forces of Nature" and succeeds at none of the above.

Rated R. Running Time: 102 minutes. (C) 2000 Harvey Karten, film_critic@compuserve.com

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