Made

Rating

Director

Jon Favreau

Screenplay

Jon Favreau

Length

1h 35m

Starring

Jon Favreau, Vince Vaughn, Famke Janssen, Makenzie Vega, Reanna Rossi, Kimberly Davies, Faizon Love

MPAA Rating

R

Review

PREFACE:
In the early 2000s, I was writing reviews for an outfit called Apollo Guide Reviews. That website has since been closed down.

Attempting to reconstruct those reviews has been an exercise in frustration. Having sent them to Apollo Guide via email on a server I no longer have access to (and which probably doesn’t have records going back that far), my only option was to dig through The Wayback Machine to see if I could find them there. Unfortunately, while I found a number of reviews, a handful of them have disappeared into the ether. At this point, almost two decades later, it is rather unlikely that I will find them again.

Luckily, I was able to locate my original review of this particular film. Please note that I was not doing my own editing at the time, Apollo Guide was. As such, there may be more than your standard number of grammatical and spelling errors in this review. In an attempt to preserve what my style had been like back then, I am not re-editing these reviews, which are presented as-is.

REVIEW:
Greater ideals don’t always provide greater positions. Made examines how two unlikely goons manage to get assigned to an illegal money drop and how their own moral standings change.

Jon Favreau stars as Bobby, a non-professional boxer trying to make it big while working a day and night job for a distrusting businessman. By day, he works as a stone mason, by night he escorts his girlfriend Jessica (Famke Janssen) to parties where she strips and lap dances for money and he keeps her safe. His high school friend, Ricky (Vince Vaughn), has been relying on Bobby’s good nature to keep him employed. All Bobby wants to do is make enough money to take Jessica away from her current job so she can stop degrading herself for money while her daughter sits alone at home.

Max (Peter Falk), Bobby’s employer, gives him an opportunity to perform a job in New York City. Against his better judgment, Bobby allows Ricky to come along as well, and the two set off to the Big Apple, where they are treated to limousine transportation, free suites and a large cash retainer.

Elements of Made indicate the nature of these fish out of water. Bobby acclimates himself to the environment easily, but the extremely talkative Ricky blunders his way through every encounter. In one scene, Max’s partner in New York, Ruiz (Sean Combs), takes the boys to a posh nightclub where his associate Leo (Leonardo Cimino) informs the two that they are meeting a Welsh gentleman called the Red Dragon (David Patrick O’Hara) and that it’s only his code name, not his real name. Ricky proceeds to introduce himself using the Welshman’s code name, much to Ruiz’s ire.

The biggest problem with the film is the acting. While Vaughn truly exemplifies the pure annoyance of his character’s nature, you can’t help but find him too annoying. Favreau, on the other hand, focuses too much on directing the film, and not enough on his acting. His performance is weak and uninteresting. Falk plays his part well, but with his history of relatively calm roles, it’s hard to hear him use so many profanities. The best performance comes from The Sopranos co-star Vincent Pastore as the quiet limo driver Jimmy. He looks the part of a Mafia goon and this film uses that to great effect.

The script is more inept than the performances. It follows these characters like they’re important, but when you realize you don’t care what happens to them, the point of the depiction becomes irrelevant. Made falls into every pit to which films directed and written by their lead actors are vulnerable. The focus on the story is limited and the dialogue is clunky. Favreau treats it like a meaningful film that blends moral ambiguities, but it only comes off as a superficial, altruistic mess.

Made won’t appeal to most audiences because of its brash, two-dimensional characters and tepid action. It never finds the soul it’s looking for, having sold it to an unwieldy script in search of meaning.

Review Written

May 27, 2002