Safe Men

''Safe Men'' is a 1998 American crime comedy film written and directed by John Hamburg (in his directorial debut), and starring Sam Rockwell and Steve Zahn.

A pair of aspiring lounge singers who are mistaken for ace safe crackers.

Plot

Sam and Eddie are unsuccessful musicians who are unwittingly recruited as professional safe-crackers by a local mobster. Veal Chop finds them in a bar where two famed ones hang out regularly, and incorrectly assumes they are them.

Veal Chop coerces Sam and Eddie into supposedly breaking into an older man's home to crack his safe for easy money. In reality it is his boss's place, local Jewish gangster Bernie Gayle. Threatening to contact local police if they do not comply, he gives them a limited time to crack open three safes.

While the singer-song writers try to hide their incompetence, Sam falls in love with Hannah, the daughter of a fence they are supposed to rob. He asks her out, but she explains she no longer wants to date thieves.

Sam bumps into Hannah, serving orderves in the barber shop her dad Good Stuff Leo uses as a front for his fencing operation. He again asks her out, but is not available for that night, as he and Eddie are committed that evening. Hannah instead invites Sam to her family's Rosh Hashanah celebration the next day.

Sam and Eddie are unsuccessful at cracking the next safe. Bernie reprimands them, but later confides in Veal Chop that the safe was emptied. Little does anyone know that the real safe crackers, Mitchell and Frank, cut open the safe while the other two fumbled with the combination lock. Bernie assumed Sam and Eddie did it, but are ballsy and kept the money.

At the party, Good Stuff retells the story of a client who purchased highly flammable slacks from him, who went up in flames before his eyes at a barbecue. Later, Sam and Hannah's makeout session is interrupted by her ex Frank. He comes to the house holding a boombox over his head, blaring a song. Hannah again turns him down.

Sam and Eddie are then tasked with breaking into the temple's safe while Bernie, jr. reads the Torah for his bar mitzvah. After familiarizing himself with his father's safe cracking book, Eddie successfully opens it. They think they are in the clear, when Bernie insists they break into Leo's office safe. When Sam breaks the news to Hannah, she breaks up with him.

Thanks to Eddie's newly found, the friends successfully break into the safe, beating out Mitchell and Frank, who congratulate them. Sam gets the safe crackers to steal back the 94' Stanley Cup after they left it at Bernie's. Hannah discovers it was Sam's idea, and that Leo has sent a heavy to break Sam's collar bone, so she hurries to the bar mitzvah party.

There, Hannah gets Leflore to back off, then she makes up with Sam. He previously found out that Eddie had decided to follow in his dad's footsteps, joining Mitchell and Frank's crew.

Cast

*Sam Rockwell as Sam
*Steve Zahn as Eddie
* John Hamburg as Phillip
*Mark Ruffalo as Frank
*Paul Giamatti as Veal Chop
* Peter Dinklage as Leflore

Reception

In August 1998, ''The New York Times'' called it a "low-energy comedy with sufficient signs of willingness to stray off the beaten track to indicate that somewhere down the line its writer and director, John Hamburg, will create something far better." Roger Ebert gave the film one star out of four, saying it "whirls wildly from one bright idea to the next, trying to find a combo that will hold the movie together. No luck." Mick LaSalle gave it "There's no dramatic urgency, no distinct point of view, no question of plot to keep an audience interested. All ''Safe Men'' has is the charm of the actors and the occasional friskiness of the writing. That's almost enough to keep the picture alive, minute by minute. Alive is not the same as thriving, but it's better than dead.

In March 2002, The A.V. Club began its review with:

The vast majority of direct-to-video films are not very good, lacking not only star power and budget, but ideas and imagination. Every once in a while, though, a movie is denied a proper theatrical release not because it's bad, but because it just isn't the sort of film for which a studio is willing to risk a multimillion-dollar advertising budget. Safe Men is one of these movies, a modest but engaging crime comedy.

A.V. Club also called the film a "sort of '' Bottle Rocket'' Lite, sharing a deadpan, consistently sustained comic tone, as well as a palpable affection for its characters. Almost everyone in ''Safe Men'' is pathetic on some level, but first-time writer-director John Hamburg grants even his least significant characters a humanity that gives the film a sort of warm, fuzzy glow.

Songs from the film

DVD release

The movie was released on DVD by Universal Pictures under the Focus Features label on August 15, 2006 with new commentary features and ''Tick'', a short film by John Hamburg about independently contracted bomb defusers starring Michael Showalter.

Mill Creek Entertainment released the Blu-ray version on July 12, 2022.

References

External links

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{{John Hamburg

1998 films
1998 crime comedy films
1998 directorial debut films
1990s American films
1990s buddy comedy films
1990s English-language films
American buddy comedy films
American crime comedy films
English-language buddy comedy films
English-language crime comedy films
Films directed by John Hamburg
Films scored by Theodore Shapiro
Films set in Rhode Island
Films with screenplays by John Hamburg
Films about singers