HELD UP / (2000) * (out of four)
You have to be pretty stupid to cast Jamie Foxx in a leading role. He is not a strong actor, if you can call him an actor at all. He can't hold our attention for five minutes, let alone 89 minutes. Give him an insipid, unfunny script, provide a production crew who would turn a Canadian location into an Arizona desert, add the creators of "I Know What You Did Last Summer," and you get an experience that makes a Chinese torture chamber look like fun.
Any one of those things is enough to trash a good movie, but "Held Up" uses all of them. Not only do we get unconvincing sets, throwaway jokes, sleep-inducing dialogue, horrendous performances, and pitiful direction, but we also have to endue them without variety. "Held Up" takes place during a dry, uninspiring day at a gas station in the middle of an Arizona desert. There aren't any neat editing techniques, innovative camera work, or eye-popping visual effects to inspire our imaginations or catch our attention. This movie is boring from the word go.
You're probably wondering how the majority of a movie can take place at a gas station set in the middle of a desert. That's a very good question. An even better question: why would anyone want to see something like that. These producers obviously thought such material would interest $15 million worth of an audience. They were wrong. According to box office records, the film only earned half its money back, proving just how interesting people found this concept.
"Held Up" even wastes the talents of Nia Long. She is a fine actress. In the press notes, she speaks highly of these filmmakers and actors. Unfortunately, actions speak louder than words. Her performance suggests she wants out of the project altogether. Probably because of the pay check and very strong self control, she bares with the painstaking agony.
Long plays Rae, the fiancee of a Chicago businessman named Michael (Jamie Foxx). The movie opens as the two argue and fight as they drive down the empty roads of Arizona in Michael's recently purchased piece-of-crap car. We spend the first ten minutes wondering what a beautiful woman would see in such a loser of a man. A few minutes later, she leaves him. GO GIRL!!!
I think we are supposed to become all hung up on whether Rae and Michael will get back together, but we don't really want them back together. Actually, we don't want any woman, or man for that matter, to endure a relationship with Michael. He is an annoying loudmouth. When a clan of stupid foreign criminals put Michael and other miscellaneous characters in the middle of a hostage situation, we actually want those gun-wielding robbers to pop him a good one.
The movie just gets dumber and dumber. The plot sinks to a new form of monotony. The only things keeping us awake is the work by one or two of the supporting actors, and I admittedly enjoyed a few scenes here and there. But overall "Held Up" is boring, trite, and desperately unfunny hokum. Jamie Foxx creates a stench so tremendously putrid he ruins almost every scene that features him.
I suppose you could laugh at this. You would have to be drunk out of your mind and be a huge fan of Foxx-but if you are drunk, you would probably fall asleep during this movie. Actually, writing about it is forcing me to remember certain scenes in the movie that were so incredibly boring that
Zzzzzzz. Zzzzzzz. Zzzzzzz.
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