At the Movies - 'Knockaround Guys'

AP Movie Writer

"Knockaround Guys" has been knocking around Hollywood's calendar for so long that one of its supporting players, Vin Diesel, became a superstar since it first showed up on the schedule.

Diesel's star power may be the best hope this utterly average mob thriller has of reaching a decent audience.

With Diesel scoring big in "The Fast and the Furious" and "XXX," it may have been a smart move for New Line Cinema to delay "Knockaround Guys," which has been on and off the schedule for a year and a half.

The movie offers solid performances from Diesel, Barry Pepper, John Malkovich, Dennis Hopper and a handful of co-stars, but their nice acting turns generally are wasted on a pack of disagreeable wiseguys who aren't very wise and a dreary story of gangsters behaving savagely.

Writers-directors Brian Koppelman and David Levien set out to craft a flick about the "sons of wiseguys" they encountered in their youth.

It's intriguing, the idea of second-generation hoods in an era of fading mob opportunities, incapable of landing straight jobs because of the stigma of their last names.

A single episode of "The Sopranos," though, offers a far more colorful, insightful profile of the decaying organized-crime scene than "Knockaround Guys" musters. Koppelman and Levien manage nice camaraderie among their young thugs, but most of the characters are too bland, repugnant or dunderheaded -- in some cases, all three -- for viewers to invest much emotional interest.

The story centers on Matty Demaret (Pepper), son of Brooklyn mob leader Benny Chains (Hopper). At age 12, Matty's uncle Teddy Deserve (Malkovich) put a pistol in his hand with instructions to snuff the snitch who put Benny behind bars.

Matty understandably wimps out. He grows up and dreams of being a sports agent; only no one will hire him because of his mob connections.

So Matty cajoles his father and uncle into a shot at the big time, organizing the delivery of a $500,000 loan from the West Coast to shore up Benny's sagging fortunes.

Matty enlists his pal Johnny Marbles (Seth Green), a pilot with a small plane, to handle the pickup. Spooked by a local sheriff (Tom Noonan) during a refueling stop in Montana, Johnny lets the money get away from him, forcing Matty, burly buddy Taylor Reese (Diesel) and Johnny's cousin Chris Scarpa (Andrew Davoli) to join him in Montana on a hunt for the loot.

This mob-boys-in-Big-Sky-country sounds cleverer than it plays out. For a time, "Knockaround Guys" seems as though it might turn into a black comedy about the gang pursuing the cash as it passes from hand to hand, a la the prized rifle in James Stewart's "Winchester '73."

"Knockaround Guys" ultimately becomes nothing more than a predictably bloody testosterone-fest as Matty and Taylor try to put the Montana town under their thumb and Uncle Teddy eventually arrives for a showdown with the sheriff.

Pepper and Diesel, in a reunion of "Saving Private Ryan" co-stars, impart a good sense of friendship and loyalty, and Diesel is riveting in a steely monologue before deposing the local bully.

The rest of the guys, however, are mostly too odious to stomach, a bunch of creeps whose ruthlessness equates to bad business, even by mob standards.

"Knockaround Guys," a New Line Cinema release, is rated R for violence, language and some drug use. Running time: 92 minutes. Two stars out of four.