The Big Bounce

Though the 1969 adaptation of novelist Elmore Leonard's crime caper was poor, this updated version from Grosse Pointe Blank director George Armitage is not much better. Taking over the role that marked Ryan O'Neal's debut, Owen Wilson plays a laid-back petty thief whose roving eye gets him into serious trouble when he falls for criminally minded thrill-seeker Sara Foster. Despite being perfectly cast, Wilson's easy charm is never completely convincing, and he struggles to carry the feature. It's partly due to the weak script and unnecessarily convoluted plot, which twists and turns without any real explanation or character development to support it. Even the entertaining smart-talk rapidly degenerates into farce, giving superior actors such as Morgan Freeman and Gary Sinise little to get their teeth into.