Eenie Meanie

This is the sort of film that might have done gangbusters in the multiplexes back in the ’90s. Today, of course, it’s a streaming-only affair, and what a shame that it is. Eenie Meanie — a title that suggests a horror film or a kiddie-friendly affair, though it is emphatically neither — is a rollicking crime comedy with enough punchy jokes and punch-the-air action that it really should be have been seen with a packed popcorn-munching Friday-opening-night crowd.

It’s a hell of an effort right out of the gate from first-time director Shawn Simmons, and another reminder that Ready Or Not’s Samara Weaving deserves to be a bigger star. She plays Edie (her character’s nickname lends the film its title), a former getaway-driver-turned-bank-teller looking to turn her life around. As we learn in a pre-titles sequence, her life of crime began aged just 14, when she was caught by the cops while driving her drunk, drug-dealing parents home from a seedy bar. Cut to several years later and Edie, having gone through a turbulent foster system, is trying to start afresh, after years of cleaning up other people’s lawless mess.

There’s a ton of vigour to this piece.

But when her on-again-off-again walking-liability ex-boyfriend John (Love’s Karl Glusman) — “the 9/11 of human beings”, as Edie charitably labels him — finds himself embroiled in some unsavoury dealings that could end his life, she is forced into One Last Job, on a heist masterminded by local crime boss Nico (Andy Garcia, back in the heist business 18 years since his last Ocean’s entry).

There’s a ton of vigour to this piece. It’s an action-comedy with more than a whiff of Shane Black to it (it is even set, briefly, at Christmas), some energetic action reminiscent of Edgar Wright (several car sequences feel Baby Driver-adjacent), and the morbid, chatterbox humour of Quentin Tarantino (many characters die abruptly and hilariously, like Pulp Fiction’s poor, hapless Marvin). Like Monty Python, the script also understands the comedic monosyllabic power of the name ‘Tim’.

That energy can, occasionally, feel a bit excessive: the convoluted set-up of the first act alone introduces that teenage arrest, an unexpected pregnancy, a bank robbery, a deadly chase, and more besides. Perhaps one or two fewer plates could have been spun. Once we get into the swing of the heist, however, it’s straightforwardly enjoyable stuff, following the guardrails of the genre with a fluency rarely seen outside of a Steven Soderbergh joint.

The final act does not quite maintain that zip and pace and tone, with a climax that almost veers into Greek or Shakespearean tragedy. Some melodramatic left-turns could lose a bit of goodwill. But that’s just a testament to this film’s constant ability to surprise — a true hidden gem that surely deserves not to stay hidden on your streaming watchlist.