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HIGH HEELS
AND LOW LIFES
HIGH
HEELS AND LOW LIFES DVD FEATURES
Region Reviewed: Region 1
Number of Discs: 1
Sound:
Dolby Digital 5.1
Picture: 1.85:1
Anamorphic
Special
Features: Making-of
featurette, "Action
Overload" fast paced montage set to music, Widescreen
anamorphic format.
High Heels And Low Lifes Plot:
Here comes the sexy comedy "High Heels And Low Lifes",
the hilarious tale of two hot babes who make crime look
good, available on DVD and to rent on April 9, 2002 from
Touchstone Home Entertainment.
This outrageous
romp stars Minnie Driver and Mary McCormack as two good girls
gone wild who plot to blackmail a criminal, but get lots more
than they
bargained for.
In "High
Heels And Low Lifes", Shannon (Minnie Driver) and Frances
(Mary
McCormack) are two friends living in London. Shannons boyfriend
Ray (Darren
Boyd) uses his radio scanner to listen in on mobile phone
conversations, but
when the girls overhear the details of a planned bank heist,
they decide to call the robbers and try to blackmail them.
Soon the women are involved in a cat and mouse game with criminal
ringleaders Mason (Kevin McNally) and Kerrigan (Michael Gambon),
two hardened low lifes who dont realize how tough the high
heels are that theyre up against.
High Heels and Low Lifes Review:Dumb,
silly and entirely entertaining, "High Heels and Low Lifes"
begins with a high-tech bank robbery -- into the middle of which
stumble Shannon (Minnie Driver) and Frances (Mary McCormack),
who have gone out and gotten drunk because Shannon's boyfriend
forgot her birthday. Thanks to this same boyfriend's surveillance
equipment (on which he was creating his "urban noise symphony
installation"), they end up with a cell phone number belonging
to one of the thieves and decide to experiment with blackmail--an
experiment that soon gets them into deep trouble.
Armed
with a phone number, they begin a scheme to get paid off or
they tell the robbers, the police are informed.
The
first drop gets bloody when the gangsters set up their
defense to not give the girls a cent and they all get
tangled deeper and deeper, raising the stakes as they
go along until the final showdown with a predictable ending.
Of course the girls pull it off but there are moments
when it seems like theyve lost the game, as youd expect
in any action/adventure script worth its salt.
The women
have a few moments of interpersonal conflict but that doesnt
lead to much character growth nor does it help to strengthen
an already strong friendship. But those moments do add a little
bit of realism to the process of relationship building among
women and give us some beats to break up the action and ground
the story into the space between these two women.
Shannon,
the more conservative of the two and a nurse, wants to use
the money
to help the hospital she works for while Mary wants to fund
her rock and roll
lifestyle.
Shannon
is apparently the dominant of the two because she can't imagine
trading all that blood and violence simply for shallow excess
and refuses to go along with the plan unless the money is
put to humanitarian use as a way to redeem it.
Like Yin
and Yang, however, Shannon has a little bit of a yen for shallow
excess in her just as Frances has a tiny compassionate streak.
Shannon's
nursing comes in handy every time someone gets shot, which
is rather frequently in this film. She cant just walk away,
but is compelled to stay and help and call the ambulance even
for the gangsters.
Not only
are the gangsters after the girls and the girls after the
money, a couple of bumbling inspectors are trying to piece
the case together to solve the robbery and keep getting reports
of a blonde and brunette women at the scene of every auxiliary
crime they tie into the original robbery.
Through
the trail of blood, the women appear and vanish like phantoms
even as
they sit right under the inspectors' noses.
To give
the women their due, they had gone to the police and reported
the crime but the police were too busy to listen to a couple
of women who had been out celebrating a birthday.
But as
Frances points out, they have more to gain by simply blackmailing
the
gangsters. The hospital is given better medical equipment
and the girls skim a bit off for their hard work.
The movie
is fun to watch, unconventional and extremely amusing. None
of the
action is remotely plausible, but the breezy script keeps
taking surprising twists, Driver and McCormack are an engaging
duo (and they run to and fro in
tight, stylish outfits), and the movie is directed with flair.
Fun, frivolous, and unexpected.
High
Heels and Low Lifes Disc Review: Making-of featurette,
"Action
Overload" fast paced montage set to music, Widescreen
anamorphic format.
