Producers: Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick and Marty Ewing Director: Shawn Simmons Screenplay: Shawn Simmons Cast: Samara Weaving, Karl Glusman, Jermaine Fowler, Marshawn Lynch, Steve Zahn, Andy Garcia, Randall Park, Elle Graham, Mike O’Malley, Kyanna Simone, Chelsey Crisp, Phuong Kubacki and Chris Bauer Distributor: 20th Century Studios/Hulu
Grade: C
Shawn Simmons’ debut feature is a bit schizophrenic. On the one hand, it aims to replicate the beats of a grindhouse fast-car heist movie. On the other it wants to depict, in serious tones, a young woman’s efforts to mold a better future for herself while remaining true to a man from her troubled past whom she still loves. “Eenie Meanie” achieves each goal fairly well on its own, but fails to smoothly meld the two. It also tries to be funny, a decision that further disrupts the tone.
The movie starts with a prologue set in 2007 Cleveland, when young Edie (Elle Graham) is summoned by her father (Steve Zahn) to drive him and her mother (Chelsey Crisp) home from a bar. When they’re stopped by the cops, her dad instructs her to outrun them as he’s taught her to do; she takes off and the getaway is successful.
Cut to fourteen years later, which would put things in 2021, though there’s curiously no indication that COVID-19 has shut society down. (How soon we, or at least Simmons and his crew, have forgotten.) Edie (now Samara Weaving) is working as a bank teller while spending her evenings partying with BFF Baby Girl (Kyanna Simone). During a robbery her eyes are injured, and during a medical exam she learns she’s pregnant.
That takes her to her troubled boyfriend John (Karl Glusman), whom she finds being beaten up by a couple of thugs trying to collect a debt. She helps him escape, and he tells her that he owes three million bucks to their former boss Nico (Andy Garcia), who offers them a deal: he’ll cancel the debt if they’ll heist the prize money at a poker competition being held in a glitzy casino. The cash is kept in a muscle car that’s the centerpiece of an exhibit at the place, so all they need do is steal it. With no alternative, they reluctantly agree; the job will be overseen by a fellow Nico trusts known as The Chaperone (Jermaine Fowler).
Despite interference from Nico’s current go-to driver Perm (Marshawn Lynch) and his girlfriend (Phuong Kubacki), they pull off the job. Unfortunately, screw-up John has one more bad move up his sleeve.
There are plenty of car chases and crashes in “Eenie Meanie,” and even if they’re pretty familiar they’re nicely staged and executed thanks to the efforts of Simmons, cinematographer Tim Ives and editors Dirk Westervelt and Chris Patterson, the visuals naturally pumped up by Bobby Krlic’s thundering score. As for the more dramatic elements of the picture—like a heart-to-heart Edie has with The Chaperone about why she’s so devoted to John, or a visit she makes to her now wheelchair-bound father and his new suburban family—Weaving, Fowler and Zahn handle them well enough, but they come across as rather sappy intrusions on the heist scenario. Garcia’s contributions to the latter amount to the sort of coolly sinister stuff he can deliver in his sleep, which is what he seems to be doing here; Glusman plays the not-so-lovable loser adequately, though despite her heartfelt speech it’s difficult to see why Edie puts up with him.
The incongruous humor is mostly in the form of limp banter between Edie and John, but there’s one brief episode in which Randall Park has a droll cameo as a former partner of John’s who ends up very much the worse for wear. Lynch’s turn is intended to be funny too, though it’s mostly irritating, and like Park’s ends gruesomely.
There are incidental moments in “Eenie Meanie” that register, and if you’re an aficionado of extended car chases or silly heist movies, it might pass muster. But its tonally jarring elements never coalesce into a satisfying whole, and you’re likely to click it off feeling rather depressed by the whole business.