Zombieland was a great and pretty original comedy that took a well-worn setup and made it funny. Can director Ruben Fleischer do the same with a heist movie? Teaming up with Jesse Eisenberg again, the story focuses on Nick (Eisenberg) and Chet (Ansari) who are forced to rob a bank when Danny MacBride’s character, Dwayne, kidnaps him and straps a bomb to his chest – his motivation being that millionaires hire people to do their crimes, and you can’t be a millionaire without thinking like one.
The movie has a brisk pace – we’ve only just been introduced to pizza boy Nick and teacher Chet when the bomb is set, and so begins the heist. The movie is pretty light on story, but it more than makes up for it with humour. It’s the first time I’ve actually enjoyed Eisenberg in a performance, and him and Ansari have great chemistry – Ansari in particular delivers some brilliant lines, and the fact that he is basically freaking out for the entire movie doesn’t actually get old. MacBride is playing the same character he usually does, but again, this is made up for with some great lines – the movie is full of gags, many of which are pretty inventive. It’s very much a movie you can chill with and just enjoy.
Fleishcher shows himself to be a dab hand behind the camera again too, with some surprisingly good action scenes. There’s one car chase in particular that manages the balancing act of being funny AND exciting at once, giving the movie a real 80s feel. Indeed, you can see that throughout the movie, as in many ways it’s a love letter to older movies – there are references to Aliens, Point Blank and more throughout, which I didn’t expect.
30 Minutes Or Less was one of the surprises for me at the Moviefest – funny, fun and pretty exciting to boot. You can definitely tell that everyone involved had fun, and loved the project, and has a lot to offer to anyone who loves comedy or crime movies. It’s refreshing too, to see such an old-school buddy crime movie in amongst the latest trend for gross-out humour – there’s not a lot of that here, just lots of well timed jokes (and cursing). The crowd loved it, and whilst it might not be to everyone’s taste, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
