Just Play Dead is the product of work by two respected industry veterans: Casino Royale director Martin Campbell, and Passenger 57 writer Dan Gordon. Unfortunately, these two experienced journeymen are stuck in a bygone era with this lame crime caper, a throwback to the post-Pulp Fiction era when everyone was trying to ape Quentin Tarantino’s style in whatever Elmore Leonard adaptation they could get a green light. Even with Samuel L. Jackson and Eva Green fronting this unfunny tale of criminal shenanigans in the Canary Islands, this film is probably best seen as a luxurious paid vacation for all involved.
Jackson, a Tarantino vet coasting along in this one, plays Jack Wolfe, a wealthy criminal who doesn’t mind turning his associates into shark food when they are no longer needed. He’s been hiding out in the Canary Islands, but when one of those associates lets slip that Jack’s riches were gained illegally, he comes up with a scheme to fake his own death and collect the $30M insurance payout. Eva Green plays his adulterous wife, Nora, and to her the idea of Jack going to jail sounds pretty great. A former sex worker who has learned how to use her sexuality to twist men into knots, she’d love to have all of that money to herself so she can sleep around with others freely.
There’s just one problem: Jack named Nora the majority owner in his estate, tying her to his crimes. Not only that, but since they are married, she can’t testify against him anyway. So the two cook up a scheme to fake Jack’s death, split the money, and then he promises to let her walk away from the marriage to live her life.
The funny thing is, Nora had already begun plotting Jack’s demise by seducing two equally gullible dudes. Dani (Eoin Macken) is a do-gooder cop who has fallen head over heels for her. As a backup plan, she also ropes in Chad (Jason Fernández), a youthful dope who never really stood a chance against her.
If only these were the only characters thrown into this convoluted blender, but there are more, like Dani’s partner who warns him about Nora; Jack’s aging hatchet man who literally knows where the bodies are buried; and a former cop-turned-nun who can still sniff out a mystery.
On paper, Just Play Dead should still be a lot of fun. You’ve got a gorgeous locale that Campbell and DP Giles Nuttgens maximize for all its tropical glory, and a cast of crazy criminals attempting to double- or even triple-cross one another. But this game of cat and mouse between Jack and Nora gets boring real quick, as Gordon’s screenplay focuses on explaining every twist and swerve as if we are as dumb as Chad.
There’s a potentially meaty role there for Green, as well. Green long ago mastered the art of playing sultry women whose attention was often deadly. Nora is one of those women, too, but she’s older and not as desired as she once was. One can imagine a younger Nora easily convincing a couple of dupes like Dani and Chad to do anything she asked, but now they put up a fight, even if it’s one they’re likely to lose. Green rarely seems comfortable, though, perhaps recognizing that this project is one not worth the effort.
Campbell continues to do solid work at this latter stage of his career. His highlights will always be his work on two James Bond movies, Casino Royale and Goldeneye, while he’ll forever be ridiculed for the disastrous 2011 Green Lantern he made with Ryan Reynolds. That said, his recent work on Memory, The Protege, and Dirty Angels (also with Eva Green) shows that he hasn’t lost a step. The fault with Just Play Dead isn’t with him, but a tedious screenplay that doesn’t push its stars very far, and the feeling that this film was dusted off from the back of a drawer where it’d been hiding for about twenty years.
Just Play Dead opens in theaters on August 28th.