# Best Laid Plans (1999)

### reviewed by
Harvey S. Karten

    BEST LAID PLANS

Reviewed by Harvey Karten Fox Searchlight Pictures/Fox 2000 Pictures/Dogstar Films Director: Mike Barker Writer: Ted Griffin Cast: Alessandro Nivola, Reese Witherspoon, Josh Brolin, Rocky Carroll, Michael G. Hagerty, Terrence Dashon Howard, Jamie Marsh, Gene Wolande, Jonathan McMurty

The twists and turns featured in Mike Barker's thriller "Best Laid Plans" offer nothing new to the genre, yet only the sharpest devotees of the contortions and distortions of the category will guess the design of this cinematic pretzel. At times we think we're looking at a photographed play, particularly since Ted Griffin's script focusses strongly on just three people who plan and scheme to enrich themselves and then diagram ways to extricate themselves from onerous circumstances. The best reason to see this drama--which is really the sort of piece you might encounter on a decent cable station in the late evening--is the quality of the acting. The always reliable Reese Witherspoon ("Pleasantville," "Election," "Cruel Intentions") is absolutely incapable of fault in any role, while relatively unknown Alessandro Nivola ("Face Off") turns in a smashingly convincing job as a guy who gets kicked around and yet is sought out to disentangle a former college buddy from a most untenable situation.

Appropriately using a flashback technique, Barker opens the movie in a bar as an increasingly inebriated Bryce (John Brolin) loudly relates unamusing jokes to his pal Nick (Alessandro Nivola). Shortly after a sexy young woman slinks into the pub and casts an eye on Bryce, Nick gets a frantic call from his buddy who desperately needs help. After having having gone home with Bryce--a college English instructor who is house-sitting for a fabulously wealthy contact--the woman accuses her new companion of rape, threatens to bring in the police, and is chained to a pole in the basement. A frantic Bryce pumps Nick for advice on how to save both his career and his freedom. When Barker flashes back four months, we find out that things are not what they seem.

Much is made about the barren town in which the characters are living, a nowhere place out West called Tropico, which both Nick and his girl friend Lissa (Reese Witherspoon) are eager to leave. Scripters like Ted Griffin and also like "Mrs. Tingle"'s Kevin Williamson seem to believe people living in decaying towns can leave only if they come into some money--in the case of "Tingle's" valedictorian, Leigh Ann Watson, by winning a scholarship to a big-city college, and in the situation of Griffin's screenplay by coming into insurance money. When Nick finds out that the money he expected from his dad's life insurance will not materialize, he falls into a trap. He becomes an accessory to a crime, one which expected to net him $10,000, but ends up actually owing money to people who put extreme pressure upon him when his best-laid robbery schemes gang a-gley.

"Best Laid Plans" features an amusing role by Rocky Carroll as the Bad Ass Dude, who demonstrates in graphic ways his determination to be paid off by the increasingly despairing Nick, and who possesses some of the cleverest dialogue in the story. He comes across as no paltry street hood at all, but more like a finance major who relentlessly and humorously quizzes his prey on Adam Smith's theories embodied in "The Wealth of Nations" and demonstrates his knowledge of the Benthamite Calculus as well. Though the anxiety-ridden Bryce serves largely as a straight-man, a sounding board for Nick's shenanigans, all three principals turn in crackling good performances in a story marred only by a cop-out sentimental finale. "Best Laid Plans" may not be sport the clever dialogue of some of David Mamet's films on similar themes ("House of Games" comes to mind), but as a puzzler that inventively blends humor with chills, Barker and Griffin's film is more than worthy of our patronage.

    Rated R.  Running Time: 90 minutes.  (C) 1999
    Harvey Karten

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