Samara Weaving in a fun and bad crime cap

There is a moral tension in the heart of the films about criminals that are often not said. Namely, the idea that crime is generally not something to aspire or be proud. This morality is essentially conventional wisdom and does not need to be declared directly, certainly not after the days of the Hays code that imposed some type of moral message in numerous crime films. Most of the criminal films (and, eventually, television programs) made after the collapse of the production code adopted one of several approaches, such as presenting criminals in the form of a fundamental characters (with a representation that does not necessarily match the backing), or as an adorable loser who make characters (or institutions) that are morally so bad or worse than their goals. All this is at the service of the audience enjoying indirectly, having a little emotion for a couple of hours on how to break the rules.

As such, there are not too many crime films that try to combine indirect emotions with sober morality, for fear of possibly defining the former or treating the second in a gloomy way. “Eenie Meanie”, a new Crime Caper movie, is that rare movie that tries to encapsulate both qualities. Produced by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (“The boys who wrote Deadpool”, as one of the posters of the film mentions with enthusiasm), the ads and trailers of the film make it look like the type of film Rauca, silly and full of action that a film of the manufacturers of “Zombieland” will be. However, the writer/director Shawn Simmons has made a much more nuanced and multifaceted movie than it seems initially.

Simmons, who has been a television writer during the last 20 years and has recently worked at the “John Wick” Spin Off “The Continental” and “Wayne” by Amazon Prime (which Reese and Wernick were writers), approaches his first feature film with a sensitivity that feels similar to Jim McBride or John McNaughton’s films. As in the director’s films as “The Big Easy” or “Normal Life”, “Eenie Meanie” is a mixture of emotions of sandy attraction and drama of low characters. It is not an easy mixture, and the movie does not always achieve it gracefully. However, thanks to Simmons’s ambition, an incredible acrobatics work, and especially Samara Weving’s main performance, “Eenie Meanie” ends as a satisfactory experience.

While “Eenie Meanie” is not rooting new paths in terms of its plot or character, the way Simmons organizes and presents these elements unique enough to make it difficult to know where the film is going until it is deeply in it. However, unlike other criminal films, “Eenie Meanie” is not playing with chronology or point of view, so, although it has been focusing a minute, it is also very simple. After an opening flashback in which an EDIE (Elle Graham) of 14 years is pressed to act as a escape driver for his little father from Deadbeat and Small Time (Steve Zahn), the film jumps to the present 15 years later, where a now adult Edie (fabric) has gone directly. He has been left behind his criminal past and goes to the Community University and works as a bank cashier in his hometown of Cleveland, Oh.

There is hardly any action in this first act of the film, something that Simmons is too anxious to get our attention, cutting the scene abruptly when it seems that we are about to get away from the police with the young Edie or the witness, the adult, Edie, demolishes some thugs that steal his bank. Simmons is mocking our desire to obtain some action and treat its arrival as a sinister inevitability, in the same way that criminal life breathes more and more through Edie’s neck. Once Edie discovers that she is pregnant with several months, she tracks her ex, John (Karl Glusman), to tell her the news, just to discover that she has gotten into another life or death disaster, after crossed by Edie’s old chief, the Kingpin Nico crime (Andy García). To clear John’s debt with Nico, Lord Crime takes advantage of Edie to achieve a robbery in a casino in Toledo, in which he will steal the prize charger of a poker tournament with $ 3 million in cash in the trunk. Along the way, Edie will have to prevent John from becoming a responsibility for work, in addition to trying to deal with his relationship not resolved and crossed by the stars.

“Eenie Meanie” is an action film in a much more traditional sense than what the public has become accustomed in a landscape after “John Wick.” It is not a wall to wall action in any way, since Simmons carefully chooses the moments when the pieces of the film arrive. However, when the film is launched, it hits hard, thanks in large part to the way Simmons addresses the action from a point of view with the feet on the ground. Once again, unlike recent action movies such as “Ballerina”, “Novocaine” or “A working man”, “Eenie Meanie” is not looking to be too exaggerated. On the other hand, Simmons and their acrobatics coordinators (Keith Campbell, Nicolas Bosc, Paul Jennings and Michael B. Johnson) give the film some sandy authenticity in their fist fights and especially their car persecutions. The atmosphere is not the histrionic of “Fast X” or “Bad Boys II”, but rather that of “Point Point”, “Dirty Mary Crazy Larry” and “Death Proof”.

For this reason, Simmons gets a lot of mileage of what could otherwise be a snack in a wilder action film. An end of the end of the end could be a mere garnish for the tastes of Michael Bay, but in “Eenie Meanie” it is a show that is worth the price of admission. This approach to the action is indicative of the entire film that operates at the level of the old school. To be clear, “Eenie Meanie” (despite some of his Grindhouse style marketing) is not a tribute to the Tarantino style, but rather an honest attempt to make a modern criminal film at ground level. For action addicts like me, this film is a quality case on quantity.

One of the most prominent aspects of “Eenie Meanie” is its cast cast, since it is very clear from the beginning they came to play. Andy García is, of course, a welcome presence as always, bringing gravitas to her gangsters while he makes it credible. His consigliere, George (Mike O’Malley), is a character that allows the two actors to become a double act, which leads to a great humor and drama. It is that mixture that Simmons is so obviously after, and nowhere is seen better than in Glusman’s performance as John. Glusman has a difficult needle to thread with this character, which does everything at the same time comic relief, romantic and wild card. It is a combination that would easily crush the minor actors, and Glusman carries it out with poise.

Because it is the cast, they cannot always allow “Eenie Meanie” to trigger all cylinders at all times. The tone and approach Elmore Leonard-Lite de Simmons demand that irreverence and sincerity simultaneously share the stage, and although someone like Tarantino or Paul Thomas Anderson can find that balance, eludes the filmmaker for the first time occasionally. There is also a little more torsion that implies the permanent character (Marshawn Lynch) that makes the robbery sequence of the centerpiece additional, but presents too many to maintain the emotional base that Simmons has built. Once again, the film ends up feeling structurally solid, but there are some potholes along the way on the road there.

The “Eenie Meanie” star and the reason to see it, apart from those car accidents and turns, that is, is weaving, and she is absolutely the most valuable player in the film. Until now, Weving’s film career has been mainly as support characters or led in horror films, with the actress demonstrating a feeling of destitution, fear and resistance such as the largest assets of her tool game. All these aspects come into play in their performance as Edie here, however, he also changed to his last girl Chutzpah in the mode of action of action. The equally loaded vulnerability and Weving’s internal strength carry the film and helps to rise on its toughest points. In a nutshell, the film may not work at all without it.

Ultimately, the largest negative element of “Eenie Meanie” is something that is not its fault, which is another original film for adults that is being thrown into a transmission service. The unique combination of tones and aesthetics of the film’s recoil are things that really stand out in a theatrical environment, and could allow it to fade in the background in the middle of so many other offers in the transmission. Even the score of Bobby Krlic (also known as the Haxan layer), which sounds mainly as a typical Hollywood score until you hear more closely and start choosing the strange metal touches, could become some form of white noise for the public that simply puts the film in the background. A more robust theatrical board of yesteryear used to allow emerging filmmakers to stretch and play with the genre in the way “Eenie Meanie” does. I can only expect the movie to have a sufficient impact to let Simmons do some more intriguing experiments (and let Weving lead some more action movies) instead of simply leaving a small cloud of dust behind.

/Classification of the film: 7 of 10

“Eenie Meanie” is broadcast on Hulu on August 22, 2025.