Okay, there's this evil computer genius named Bristol (Doug Hutchison, a graduate of the John Malkovich school of lisping insinuation) who steals $42 million in gold from the Federal Reserve, only to have his partner Jaster (Robert Pastorelli) take off with
the goods. Then Jaster gets arrested for DWI and has a fatal heart attack in jail while being interrogated by ruthless treasury agent Edgar Clenteen (David Morse). Clenteen, fortunately, has a back-up plan: what if he could make Bristol believe that Alvin Sanders (Jamie Foxx), the dumb schmuck who
shared a cell with Jaster, knows something about the missing gold? Super-hacker Bristol might emerge from hiding, and the T-Men could nab him. As to Alvin, who was arrested for stealing prawns — who cares? He's a screwup, and if he gets caught in the line of fire the world would be
none the worse for his absence. So the black-op boys surreptitiously implant a transmitter in Alvin's jaw and get him sprung, then scramble to make sure he doesn't land his scheming butt back in the slammer before Bristol has a chance to make contact. Don't be misled by promotional materials that
position this picture as a comedy. It's a paranoid, high-tech thriller that proceeds from the notion that the U.S. government regularly commits callously brutal acts against its own citizens. Foxx's trademark mugging and quipping can't do much to lighten things up, especially with Tobias
Scheissler's gloomy cinematography casting a funereal pall over the proceedings. The cliched story makes precious little sense, and the movie never settles on a tone where the government peeping toms are concerned — just how much are we supposed to hate them, anyway? But Foxx is a charmer,
and he makes Alvin's unlikely evolution from relentless hustler to reasonably solid citizen believable, and even rather touching. --Maitland McDonagh
