User Reviews

Toll-booth attendant Henry (Keanu Reeves) serves jail time for a bank heist he didn't commit. On being released he determines to rob the same bank (on the grounds that he might as well, as he has already served the time). He recruits cellmate Max (James Caan) to help with a plan involving using an old tunnel between the bank and the theatre next door. The theatre is rehearsing Chekov's The Cherry Orchard and we find Max both performing and falling for actress Julie (Vera Farmiga).

I knew little about this film going in: only a synopsis briefer than the one in the preceding paragraph. In particular, I did not know what genre the film fitted into and, consequently, I spent the opening half hour or more trying to figure out what sort of movie I was watching.

I am no wiser.

But I don't think it matters. It features comic elements and there are points when you chuckle, but it isn't a comedy (possibly more of a comedy of errors than an outright comedy). It might be classed as a drama except, to be perfectly frank, it is so totally improbable that it seems unfair to classify it as a drama. There are elements of romance except, again...

I never lost interest, and I was entertained throughout, but I left the cinema thoroughly bemused as to what exactly I had just watched.

I think the overall improbability is what works most strongly against the film, together with Keanu Reeves' Henry during the first half hour or more. Henry shows no reaction to anything, to the extent that I wondered if he was supposed to be simple minded. You never know what he is feeling or thinking and, therefore, what his motivations are and, given the plot line, this is a serious failing. And it's a failing in the conception of the character, not in Reeves' acting, because Henry suddenly starts reacting and behaving normally about a third of the way through.

James Caan is clearly having a great deal of fun as Max, and Vera Farmiga continues to impress by cutting a thoroughly believable Julie out of unlikely cloth. And Peter Stormare as a caricature Russian director is almost worth the price of admission on his own.

This movie is worth trying out if you fancy something which doesn't obviously fit any conventional stereotype.

keanu Reeves stars in this charming indie about a lovable loser who is sent to prison for a crime he didn't commit - he thought he was driving his friends to a baseball game but turns out they were robbing a bank - and subsequently decides that 'if he's done the time he might as well do the crime' and sets out to rob said bank following his release after a bunch of life lessons in the slammer with cellmate James Caan.

In order to do this, Reeves has to get a role in the production of Chekov's 'The Cherry Blossom' next door to the bank (the plan is to dig through a wall in the theatre into a pre-existing tunnel that connects the theatre and bank) as Lopahkin and he subsequently falls in love with his leading lady ,played by Vera Farmiga who was so good last year opposite George Clooney in Up In The Air. As the play, the romance and the robbery all progress, the three strands of the plot head to an enjoyably, albeit somewhat predictable, culmination on opening night.

This is all fairly ridiculous stuff, and seems to take place in some kind of small town (re: Buffalo) bubble where the laws of reality/common sense have been suspended: is it really this easy to steal 12 million dollars? Is is really possible nobody would hear/notice the gang tunnelling through the walls? Is Chekov's The Cherry Blossom really a sell out play?

However, if you can suspend your disbelief at the ridiculousness of the whole thing, then the movie is an enjoyable and offbeat romantic comedy, featuring great performances from Caan and Farmiga and perhaps only spoiled slightly by Reeves' trademark wooden and unemotional offering which can be summed up in this picture of him that features the facial expression he wears for pretty much the entirety of the movie:

To begin with I thought that Reeves had been cast perfectly as the monosyllabic, emotionally detached loser Henry (possibly his best casting since the moronic Ted in the Bill and Ted movies) and there's an enjoyable scene where the director of the play (Peter Stormare) is trying to teach him how to act. You might think that - as Reeves produced the movie too - he might be sending himself up with this scene as Jean Claude Van Damme did in JCVD, but I doubt that Reeves has the intelligence or creativity to consider such a notion. However, other than the final scene, I felt that Reeves' attempts to act within the movie were pretty indifferent to his actual performance and claims from other cast members that Henry was 'a natural' suitably laughable.

I wasn't convinced either by his chirpsing of Farmiga - although he had some pretty sick chirpses (let's go get some ice cream; i'm planning on robbing the bank) they were delivered with a lack of any charisma and it made me question how a cool, sassy woman like her would jump into bed so quickly with a loser like Henry. My friend told me it was just because he was so hot though. This kind of makes sense.

The film is to be commended for focussing less on the robbery itself and more upon the relationships of all the characters who populate it, which enables its quirky humour to be exploited to the maximum with several laugh out loud moments; my favourite of which was the beard that Reeves is required to wear in his role as Lopahkin, although i'm not sure if this was intentional:

Overall Henry's Crime is an enjoyable caper and well worth watching. Although it could be argued that the real crime is Keanu Reeve's acting, I found that his stiff attempt at a deadpan performance only added to the quirkiness of the humour of the whole production, and probably made me enjoy it even more.

The title of my post says it all.

The movie IS different. I was hoping for other ending yet, seeing its conventions, I wansn't surprised it did not meet my expectations.

I don't mind "slow" movies as long as ithey go somewhere. This one goes somewhere, not where I wanted it to go, though, but still it goes.

Other viewers praised the role of Vera Farmiga - personally I did NOT like her performance here, playing "stiffy" actress she was all way too stiffy for my liking.

Other notes: I get this was all the romance yet I was hoping for the boom! at the end, like the bad guy (Fisher from the Cat series) gets what he deserves. That never happened.

All in all, I give it SIX. Different, kinda boring, yet WAY better than most of the movies I have watched in the past 30 months.

Did no one ever think that breaking down the wall in his dressing room might clue in those who would be interested in the bank robbery? And no one heard the banging on the wall?

He should have known a lot earlier when opening night was. They should have had the discussion about their future a lot sooner.

No one hears mechanical devices, or a gun shot??

Not very well thought out...

Why the "awful" rating? Our cable channel offered it for free and got almost no takers... I watched it and could see why! Sorry Keanu but first you're brain- dead with no explanation then suddenly you are a "natural" actor who can do Chekov instantly? Slow, dumb non-event with great supporting cast simply wasted on this. It lacks any kind of dynamic in the story, drama or plot. Reeves goes to the nicest prison on the planet which is full of mature, well-balanced, kindly folk (here I vomit)and manages to be liked, loved and respected by everyone - even the wife who left him and the cop who arrested him for bank robbery - without lifting a finger or even an eyebrow! A plot full of lazy holes and patches....they spent millions and made peanuts on this straight to the give-away bin DVD.

Watch all clips and trailers, then read the full IMDb synopsis and then 'Rotten Tomatoes' movie info; take note of the lousy ratings from every source you may refer to for such things and ask yourself: "Can it really be that bad?"

Well I thought it could and of course I watch it anyway. In the first five or so minutes at the beginning of the movie I was forming an opinion, too soon, of the main character Henry, played by Keanu Reeves, and that opinion was to put it in terms everyone can understand… what a moron. The simple minded guy, displayed no sign of life except for a pulse and an uncanny ability to move and utter words. In jail, Henry has for a cell-mate none other than Max, played by James Caan; I thought… there goes any chance of a surprise character, a convict. When Vera Farmiga's character Julie comes into the picture, a little later, you get but one impression, she's playing a bitch, which she did quite well.

I watched the movie right to the end; along the way I kept thinking… Well this is fun. Past the midway point, still fun but just a little predictable. There were actually more funny parts than just what you see in the trailers and the whole premise, long as it is to outline, works; somehow it does. I don't think it deserved as poor a rating as it got and perhaps it was too easy for the critics to dismiss it and poke fun of it. I liked it. I had a fun time watching it and I'll bet you will to, if for no other reason than you shouldn't.

Keanu Reeves plays a clueless toll-booth attendant in director Malcolm Venville "Henry's Crime" who gets arrested for being an accomplice in a bank robbery. Henry Torne (Keanu Reeves of "The Matrix") refuses to inform on the two men who actually did rob the bank while he awaited their return in the getaway car, and Henry receives a prison sentence. In prison, Henry bunks with a confidence artist Max Saltzman (James Caan of "The Godfather") who enjoys prison. Indeed, Max enjoys prison so much that when he goes before the review board for parole, he makes threats so that the prison officials won't release him. After spending some time in prison and trying to make everybody believe that he had nothing to do with the bank robbery, Henry has a change of heart. He has heard Max ridicule him about the fact that he—Henry—is doing the time for not doing the crime. Anyway, Henry wants to get out so he can do the crime. He convinces the review board that he is safe for public consumption, and they release him from prison. As it turns out one of the bank robbers who got away, Joe (Danny Hoch of "Black Hawk Down"), has moved in with Henry's wife, Debbie (Judy Greer), and he has gotten Debbie pregnant. Meantime, the other criminal involved with the opening bank robbery, Eddie Vibes (Fisher Stevens of "Short Circuit"), has hightailed it out of Buffalo, New York, where the bank robbery occurred. After Henry gets out of jail, he is taking a leak in the bathroom at a downtown restaurant. He saw an old newspaper front page about the bank that he was convicted for robbing. It seems that bootleggers back in the days of Prohibition used a tunnel between the local play house and the bank to move their liquor and store it in the vault. Armed with this historical insight, Henry motivates Max to behave during his next parole review, and Max gets out of jail. They decide to rob the bank next to the theater, but they realize that it is going to require them being on the inside. Max learns that the boarded up entrance to the tunnel is in a dressing room. Incredibly, Henry auditions for the role when it becomes available, and the crazy European director, Darek Millodragovic (Peter Stormare of "The Big Lebowski"), decides to cast Henry in the role. At the same time, Henry has fallen in love with the leading lady in the play, Julie Ivanova (Vera Farmiga of "The Conjuring"), and they become a couple. All of this transpires while Max and Henry are excavating the old tunnel. "Henry's Crime" is a bank robbery caper where the good guys get away with the crime. Simultaneously, it is a comedy, too, but the events in it seem drawn out because it resembles an art film rather than a loud, brash, comedy caper. The performances are all good, especially Caan as the inmate. Actually, "Henry's Crime" reminded me of an earlier James Caan bank robbery saga "Harry and Walter Go To New York." This lightweight, sometimes suspenseful saga is entertaining nonsense.

He did the time for a bank robbery he didn't commit. Now that he's out, he's really gonna rob that bank. Nice Concept. Might look implausible if the actors don't tread delicately with utmost conviction. Or unless you can find an actor that stands outside the field of acting altogether and can retain a blank poker face through it all. Enter Keanu Reeves.

He's Henry, a shiftless toll booth operator in Buffalo, suckered into being accessory to a bank robbery and imprisoned, whereupon his cellmates (led by James Caan as Max) urge him to exact recompense for the injustice of his incarceration: when he gets out, commit a real crime to make up for the time he already did unjustly.

Though a comedy caper movie, HENRY'S CRIME is not flashy or frenetic; it's indie all the way (written by David White, Stephen Hamel and Sacha Gervasi - who may be the love-child of Sacha Baron Cohen and Ricky Gervais). With lean, expedient direction by Malcolm Venville, initially funded by Keanu himself, the movie plods along bemusedly and interestingly, much like its lead character, who takes everything with equanimity. He is, after all, The One.

Henry never bats an eyelid when he is arrested; or when his girlfriend (insipid Judy Greer) visits him in jail to tell him she has fallen in love; even when he is victim of a violent Meet Cute, as he is run down in the street by aspiring theater actress Julie (the stunning Vera Farmiga, in an uncharacteristically shrikey role). Nothing seems to reach this guy's nerve endings. Usually I would laugh and/or complain about the lack of acting from Keanu, but in this context, his demeanor fits perfectly. One would have to be quite inured to emotion existing each day in the suburban rut we find him in, and then to endure jail time. Yet his determination (or whatever you'd call that somnambulistic pseudo-ambition) to lash out and grab life by the baby-makers, to rob the very bank he was convicted of robbing indicates SOME kind of moral outrage at the least.

Didn't Morpheus tell us The One would bring balance? Henry needs Max to help him pull the heist, so he convinces Max to take his parole. Up 'til now, Max - a lifer who loves prison for its regularity - has dialed the Crazy up to 8 every time he sat in front of the parole board. He'd rather be called a "confidence man" than "con-man" (too pedestrian); perpetrating a crime is not even about the money, but the thrill of the chase, and getting caught for that crime will only land him back in jail - which he loves - so it's all win-win for him.

Henry and Julie must necessarily bonk, she must necessarily figure in the plot (by rehearsing in a theater right next door to the bank - a theater which once had a tunnel connecting it to the bank vault - oh, heavens to plot convenience!), Max necessarily provides comic sidekick relief, and Henry must necessarily become an unwitting hero during the heist... What ISN'T so necessary is Peter Stormare going above and beyond as eccentric Euro director of the play, Darek Millodragovic, whose overacting and over-accent is so hilarious, Keanu almost snapped out of his jet lag.

To infiltrate the theater complex, Henry must join the theater company... and so flowers the greatest irony in this movie: this guy who Can't Actually Act (in real life or in this movie role) must act at being an Actor.

It's a fine line this movie treads in making Henry an anti-hero (read as criminal) and allowing him to commit a crime that is not morally reprehensible, so he doesn't lose the audience. In that sense, Keanu's underplaying-to-the-point-of-chloroform performance is exemplary, selling us a character who bemusedly decides that his only post-prison option is to actually do what the confidence man suggested.

Amusing resolution, though gutless, as Henry has to somehow pay for his crime, no matter how innocuous it was, and no matter that he was already convicted mistakenly. Damn you MPAA, and your obnoxious, hypocritical meddling in otherwise interesting movies! If the MPAA had any sense - which they don't - they would make the people who incarcerated Henry incorrectly pay for THAT injustice. But that's too complicated for a society weaned on seeing "crime" as low-level, easily-defeated, punch-em-up tropes.

The jejune surrender to good screen writing by making Henry get busted again - simply for trying to even the score against The Man - THAT... is the movie's real crime.

--Poffy The Cucumber