After a foolproof scam turns sour, Jimmy the Saint (a soulful but miscast Andy Garcia, who mainly acts with his hair) and his hard-bitten crew must put their various sordid affairs in order before facing their final bloody curtain call. It's not nearly as clever as it thinks it is, but Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead is a terminally wise-ass (and extremely violent) caper flick, and is still one of the better post-Tarantino crime opuses, with some sharp dialogue, a scenery-chewing Christopher Walken (as a paraplegic archcriminal) and unhinged performances by... Treat Williams and the obsequious Steve Buscemi that must be seen to be (dis)believed. Neophyte scripter Scott Rosenberg would later pen hipper-than-thou scripts for Beautiful Girls, Con Air and Armageddon, while director Gary Fleder moved on to the somewhat more reputable Kiss the Girls. The tongue-twisting title is from a Warren Zevon song. --Andrew Wright [show more]
"Reformed" gangster Jimmy the Saint (Garcia) is lured from emulating respectability into a kidnap attempt by former boss 'the Man with Plan' (Walken). Assembling a crew of caricature crims, he makes out-of-practice errors of judgement leading to him and his associates being pursued by hit-man 'Mr Shhh' (played adroitly by Steve Buscemi). On the surface this seems like an ambitious film. It ventures into the microcosm of a sleazy gangster food chain, but it is one energised continually by black humour. There is a sense of insular cohesion from the (invented?) parochial Denver hoodlum lexicon. Some distracting bathos is generated by Jimmy's desperate will to preserve his shot at straight success and romance with love interest Dagney (Gabrielle Anwar), but it's the odd dialogue and atypical storyline that makes this movie worth watching or possibly owning. There are some excellent lines, and deft comic touches, that are not laugh-out-loud (if you were alone), but still very entertaining. It's more than 3/4; it is a 3.5 rated offering.
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