Slingshot Reviews

Fast Bobby (Svetlana Metkina), the laughably unconvincing beautiful Russian crimelord in Jay Alaimo's Slingshot, describes the main characters' have-affairs-with-lonely-middle-aged-housewives-then-rob-them-blind scheme as "impressive, dangerous...and oh so boring." Well, she's right about the last one. Films about professional con men generally hinge on the audience believing that the grifters are clever and charming enough to survive on what they scam off their victims, but Taylor (Balthazar Getty) and Ashley (David Arquette) don't seem bright enough to work regular jobs, let alone live by their wits. As an actor, Getty is incapable of conveying even the most meager animal cunning, and Taylor comes off as a dimwitted lunk, barely capable of routine conversation, let alone trickery. For his part, Arquette plays Ashley with his hostility and cynicism all on the surface. He is a meltdown waiting to happen, so it's clear where the story is headed from the opening scenes. Julianna Margulies and Thora Birch, as potential victims and love interests, fare better, perhaps because their characters are rooted in a reality with which the filmmakers are intimately familiar, as opposed to knowing about them through other movies and television shows. Arquette manages a few amusing moments, but the further the film strays from safe suburbia, as in the scenes with Fast Bobby, and the ludicrous melodrama of the climax, the weaker it gets.