Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on September 2011

In Paul Haggis’s new film, Russell Crowe plays a Prius-driving junior-college teacher whose wife (Elizabeth Banks) is accused and convicted of murdering her boss, perhaps unjustly. After exhausting all possible appeals, a suicide attempt convinces this milquetoast guy that he must break his spouse out of jail and get her and their young son to safety in a foreign country. There ensues what amounts to a lengthy and logistically complex Felonies-for-Dummies segment, where he looks into things like obtaining fake passports and a gun, breaking into vehicles, falsifying medical records, etc. The guy has more resolve than smarts, and of course no friggin’ idea what he’s doing. But whatever suspense the film generates hinges on this very ineptitude and his inevitable mistakes. What would you do? Then, in the final 30 minutes the movie morphs into a fairly white-knuckle thriller when the breakout attempt is made. The story’s complicated structure relies overmuch on coincidence (a favored device of the director, who also made Crash), but most heist/action films do, and if you can work up the required suspension of disbelief, you’re in for some flawed-but-solid entertainment.