Where the Money Is (2000)

an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

All that we are seeing on the screen is happening with real people, real action sequences in the background, forcing the eye to watch as if we were there.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Retirement home nurse Carol Ann MacKay (Linda Fiorentino) is married to her high school boyfriend Wayne (Dermot Mulroney). They were the Prom King and Queen. One day, Henry Manning (Paul Newman) is brought in from prison. He had been incapacitated by a stroke. Carol starts to wonder if the legendary bank robber is faking to get out of prison. The allure of a criminal life is just the antidote to her blend life with Wayne.Fiorentino is great sexy fun. There is an appealing mentorship with Newman's criminal character. He's a solid sly fox. The main problem is that her husband Wayne keeps blocking the flow. I certainly do not want a romantic relationship but Fiorentino makes for a fun eager student. I would alter Wayne or eliminate him altogether.

For a moment you'd feel that this movie is all about nothing. But fortunately it isn't.Here, I preferred Paul Newman's Henry Manning over his Henry Gondorff back in The Sting (1973). True that it seems as ordinary flick, with the word TV written all over it (frankly I thought many times about the irony between the 18 million dollar budget and the 5 and a half million gross !). Though, it is a fine entertaining movie, for me, more than that Oscar winning movie of the 1970s.I liked Linda Fiorentino's both role and performance. She made it well as sensitive, hot and most of all understanding her character not as a lover of the old man, but a mentor's pupil. Just notice her eye look whenever she's with Newman; she's hungry for his brilliance so his experience.The thing about this movie is all in the last 15 minutes, not with the clever twists but where the meaning completes clearly. The movie's world centers around dead people (the old folks), live people but subsist as dead (the married young couple), and one truly live man (the master thief). The whole story is about the journey of these 2 love birds through the vivid world of this thief. And who'd have the ability to stand it and continue living it as it should : daringly and smartly. Because outside this way you'd be either a cowered or a loser (both dead anyway). So where is the money ? As the last shot tells us : It's where the guts, and the lust for life is.I believe Newman was one of the best actors who could portray this latent passionate love for life or precisely being alive. Observe him driving his car at the end chase, Oh God ! This 75 year old guy, who's originally famous of riding speed cars, seemed really convincing, mastering his moves as a wild heart of a man. This is so simple; just a solid heist with a point of view about life. Yes, again and again the genre movie can carry out messages. So…what could be missing ? Maybe more good music score. And that's it.For the fans of the heist movies only : besides (Where the Money Is), 2000 got others such as (Reindeer Games) and (The Opportunists). Before a revival would come with the whole next decade along with 2001's Ocean's Eleven and many more.

Paul Newman is on the con again, this time he's a bank robber feigning a stroke in order to get him moved from prison and into a hospital on the outside in order to get to the money he stole. Linda Fiorentino stars as the nurse assigned to look after him, who is more than a little suspicious of him, while also being totally fascinated by his past so much so that she plans to `do a job' herself – with the aid of `invalid' Newman. An okay thriller that mainly suffers from the lack of action involved, Newman is good as usual and Fiorentino is very sexy in a nurses uniform(!), while Dermot Mulroney does all right as Fiorentinos husband, reluctant to go along with her plan. I don't think this got a cinema release over here in the UK, and without Newman's involvement you can't help feel that this would have been a TV movie.

This movie had some real laughs here and there, but the caper itself was merely competent, and seemed foregone. As much as I love Paul Newman and Linda Fiorentino, I just couldn't bring myself to care about their characters. If you're looking for a caper with comedy to spare, try the much maligned Hudson Hawk.