Released
1995
Barry Sonnenfeld gets the credit for helming the best screen adaptation of any Elmore Leonard work to-date. Scott Frank's Golden Globe nominated script vividly brings to life the author's hysterically low-life characters, while recreating the unique cadences of Leonard's incomparable dialogue. The result is a flashy, fast and funny outing which lampoons Detroit goombahs and La-La land fringe-dwellers with equal abandon. The players are all in top form: Hackman has never been funnier, and Farina almost steals the picture as a disgruntled mobster who has an axe to grind with Chili. Pay attention to catch a glimpse of a pre-"Sopranos" James Gandolfini as a hapless bodyguard.