Gun Shy Reviews

This odd and ultimately unsuccessful mix of therapy humor, satirical swipes at wiseguy cliches and coarse potty jokes will inevitably be seen as an ANALYZE THIS/Sopranos rip off, though the project's origins seem to date back more than six years. DEA agent Charlie (Liam Neeson) has lost his nerve. After years of breezing through dangerous undercover assignments, an operation in Florida went terribly wrong and exploded into a surreal bloodbath, leaving him a quivering mess. But Charlie's boss (Mitch Pileggi) insists that he go to New York and broker a delicate deal between thin-skinned Colombian drug lord Fidel Vaillar (Jose Zuniga), hotheaded Mafia fringe player Fulvio Nesstra (Oliver Platt) and drug-laundering stock broker Jason Cane (Andy Lauer). A chance meeting with a soothing psychiatrist (Michael Mantell) propels Charlie into group therapy with a bunch of neurotic desk jockeys, with whom he develops a surprisingly warm camaraderie. And while seeing another doctor about his stress-induced flatulence, Charlie meets free-spirited enema nurse Judy (Sandra Bullock), who helps him recover his joie de vivre. But there's still that deal to pull off, and everything keeps going wrong. The big trouble here is that there seem to be pieces of three different films rubbing up against each other without ever fitting together. There's the part in which cops and crooks all talk as though they've spent years in therapy, getting in touch with their feelings; it contains some pretty funny dialogue that's elevated above one-liner status by the dead-pan performances of Neeson, Platt and Zuniga. Then there's the vulgar, juvenile bodily-function joke bit, about which the less said, the better. Finally, we have Neeson's romance with Bullock (who also produced the film), which appears to have been grafted onto the main story as an afterthought. It's a shame everything is so discombobulated, because some sparkling moments get lost in the mess.