Break a Leg (2005)

Thanks for the memories!

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

Break a Leg is a crushingly long and poorly told inside joke. It does have a halfway decent punch line but by the time the movie gets to it, you will have lost the will to live. Less a story and more a grab bag of experiences and anecdotes collected by the writers during their time in the trenches as struggling Hollywood actors, the slipshod script was handed over to a self-evidently witless director who proceeded to shoot it with all the style of Grace Kelly…after she'd been dead for 17 years. I will give this flock of buffoons credit for one thing. They've made a film about succeeding in show business which starkly demonstrates they have neither the talent nor skill to ever achieve that success. They should have gotten an Oscar for "Most Ironic Picture".Max Mateo (John Cassini) is a perpetually out of work actor who's frustrated at seeing roles he should get arbitrarily land in the laps of others. When he overhears two producers decide to pass him over for a part again based on which one of them can urinate the longest, Max finally snaps. He breaks the leg of the actor who got the job over him, then accidentally kills him. The role goes to Max and propels him into being the hot, young actor on the scene. Now, John Cassini is too homely and old to pass for either "young" or "hot", but I guess that's where suspension of disbelief comes in.Fame and fortune prove fairly fleeting for Max, even though he cripples another actor for a role. As his moment in the spotlight starts to dim, the police start to close in on Max for his crimes. Detectives Sanchez and Coyle (Rene Rivera and J.J. Johnston) set a harebrained trap for Max that works in spite of all logic and probability, even though Sanchez gets bitten by the acting himself and becomes as useful in the investigation as a wet sack of bricks.There are two things I want to say about the plot of Break a Leg. First, I know a lot of cruddy cop movies have been made by and for people who never watch anything but cruddy cop movies. As bad as those flicks are, they're head and shoulders above this one. That's because these filmmakers have no idea who cops are, what they do or how they do it. It's like writers Frank and John Cassini and director Monika Mitchell have never watched a cop movie, viewed a cop TV show, read a cop novel, seen a cop on the news or even passed by an officer on the street.Secondly, this plot involves perhaps the most glaring example of incompetent screen writing I've ever encountered. And if you've read other of my reviews on here, you know I've seen films with such horrible scripts they're an argument against the invention of the written word. Break a Leg has a little something that surpasses them all. Sanchez and Coyle come up with the plan to set up a phony film production. Though the movie is so ineptly written that it never explicitly states this, the idea is obviously to get Max to audition for a role, give the part to Sanchez pretending to be another actor and catch Max in the act of trying to kill his way to stardom again. Well, that's exactly what happens. It just doesn't happen on the phony movie set up by the police. You see, Max and Sanchez actually audition for the same part in a real film production. They actually become the final two choices for the part. Sanchez actually gets picked for the role over Max and then Max actually does try and kill him, while Sanchez literally does nothing but sit around his apartment waiting to catch Max red handed. If you can explain the point of setting up the phony film, only to dropkick plausibility into the Sun and have the scenario happen with a legitimate movie, you need to grow a long beard and move away to a mountain cave because you are the wisest human being who has ever lived.Fittingly, the acting in Break a Leg is the best thing about it. John and Frank Cassini are better than average as Max and his cousin Tony. Molly Parker is pretty good as the beautiful girlfriend success brings into Max's life. Jennifer Beals, Kevin Corrigan and Sandra Oh are nice in very small parts. Eric McCormack and Paula Marshall are excellent in an early scene that makes you think this film is going to be filled with funny cameos by well known actors, but then there's never another scene like it in the movie. However, J.J. Johnston sticks out like a sore thumb. Given the shockingly low quality of his performance, I can't believe he's a professional thespian who was paid to appear in this production. He's much more like an old homeless guy who showed up on the set one day, happened to fit the wardrobe of Detective Coyle and was willing to orally pleasure every member of the cast and crew.There have been far too many pretentious, self absorbed, dull and conceited films made about the hard life of the struggling actor. I would rather watch every other movie like that ever made before I would sit through Break a Leg one more time.

Monika Mitchell's showbiz satire has some laughs and some premeditated violence. I wouldn't say blood-soaked; but there is insult and injury. Max Matteo(John Cassini)is a character actor that has a quirky adaptable presence on screen, but he has a terrible track record of being chosen for the parts he goes after. There is always a producer's nephew or seemingly trivial reason for his not being awarded the role he seeks. Well, the best thing to do is get rid of the competition...Max becomes obsessed with such thoughts. The rewarding career is just a swing, push and shot away. Other cast members: Rene Rivera, Molly Parker, Jennifer Beals, Frank Cassini and cameos by Eric Roberts and Sandra Oh. Well, that's show business...or is it?

This was the worst movie I saw at WorldFest and it also received the least amount of applause afterwards! I can only think it is receiving such recognition based on the amount of known actors in the film. It's great to see J.Beals but she's only in the movie for a few minutes. M.Parker is a much better actress than the part allowed for. The rest of the acting is hard to judge because the movie is so ridiculous and predictable. The main character is totally unsympathetic and therefore a bore to watch. There is no real emotional depth to the story. A movie revolving about an actor who can't get work doesn't feel very original to me. Nor does the development of the cop. It feels like one of many straight-to-video movies I saw back in the 90s ... And not even a good one in those standards.

The story was written well, and it kept my attention. There were some great shots and sequences in the film. There is a sequence where the main character (played by John Cassini) is acting out his part as a priest...delivering his lines to black x's on a green screen. The camera clips back and forth between Cassini's priest and the x's as his lines are spoken. A shot that particularly stood out was a 30-second shot of Cassini inserting a blue contact lens over his brown eye, the lens doesn't quite want to stay in place, over and over Cassini blinks, and finally the lens slides into place. Fantastic shot. Enjoyable film, I would recommend it.