Rent Twenty Bucks (1993)

About the Correct Amount I Reckon - Twenty Bucks review by Strovey

Apparently, this film was created after Leslie Bohem found a script stashed away his father Leslie had written in 1935. The story while unusual is not entirely original, there was a film made in 1942 called ‘Tales of Manhattan’ which had a similar theme albeit about a topcoat. What Twenty Bucks really does is use the money as an excuse in writing quick vignettes about various characters that have no bearing on each other. Unfortunately, the writer here tries to weave their tales in and amongst each other in an unlikely series of events that means no character gets any real development or depth.

For instance, Brendan Fraser’s character pops up in and out of the other players’ lives and I think we are supposed to feel sympathy for him and the circumstances the bill leads him to, but the way it is played, and written makes him an ignorant, dozy, airhead that his fiancée did well to dump.

Easily the best section involves Christopher Lloyd and Steve Buscemi who effortlessly play two sleazeball criminals from different ends of the scale, Buscemi the grubby conman, and Lloyd the calculating, murderous but cool and collected robber. Unfortunately, their interesting, violent, and fun story is too soon over, and we never hear from them again.

What we do get is an annoying and unlikely vagrant old lady and dipping in and out of Elisabeth Shue’s burgeoning writer tale and Brendan Fraser’s thicko.

The film is dotted with high-profile cameos, some bizarre and odd, Gladys Knight was obviously asked to do ten minutes on set, and William H. Macy is wasted but it was nice to see David Schwimmer not being Ross and showing he could act other than gurning and over-reacting on Friends.

Some of the younger actors are definitely ‘acting’ and it can be seen how they have developed over the years from this 1993 effort, there is a lot of ‘nines’ here that should be dialled back to ‘six’ at least. The levels are great, Lloyd and Buscemi, to poor, the stripper Melora Walters.

The cinematography and locations fit the story and characters perfectly and the script despite my reservations about the story is on the whole natural and does not jar you out of the viewing as many films do. As the film reaches the conclusion things get more convoluted and unlikely and the late Spalding Gray as a priest is probably in the film's only genuinely amusing scene but overall, Twenty Bucks both succeeds at what it is trying to do and fails.

The story is original for the time but is not if you watch enough films. Trying to be the average life of a twenty-dollar bill makes it an extraordinary tale about some almost spiritual coincidences and due to the cameos and little windows into character’s lives, I did not invest in any of them or care about them.

Twenty Dollars was worth making and is worth watching but I would never watch it again and like a grubby twenty-dollar bill you might pass over the counter in a ‘store’ it is soon forgotten.