ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS
Starring Ice Cube and Mike Epps
Opens Friday, April 19
Cineplex Odeon
* (out of five)

Is Ice Cube so intimidating that no one has the guts to tell him when his writing sucks? Some courageous soul should’ve read the script for All About the Benjamins, looked the Cubester right in the eyes and said, "Buddy, you’re cool and all, but anything in here that wasn’t already done to death on Miami Vice was covered in 48 Hours and Bulletproof. Instead, the rapper-actor made something so brainless and cliché that even a straight-to-video fan might walk out on it.

In this debacle, Cube plays the usual streetwise tough with a giant chip on his shoulder. This time around he’s an irritable bounty hunter named Bucum, who, despite a sleek car, nice pad and a hobby collecting exotic fish, can’t seem to find the money (‘Benjamins’) to start his own detective agency. The door to prosperity opens when he stumbles upon a multiple-murder/diamond heist while trying to collar Reggie (Mike Epps), a chronically incarcerated goofball con artist. If Bucum can solve the case before the cops, he’s guaranteed the publicity and cash he needs to make his P.I. business fly.

Coincidentally, Reggie leaves a lottery ticket worth $50 million in the bad guys’ van during an escape. The uneasy partners must work together to recover their fortunes from a cartoonishly nasty Scottish gangster. Tom Flanagan, who’s had sidekick roles in Gladiator and Braveheart, plays a two-dimensional James Bond-style villain, complete with facial scars and a tendency to shoot his own henchmen.

To ensure there’s enough danger and Benjamins to keep the money-mad buddy flick running, Cube also has the characters scrambling to figure out where the real diamonds are hidden. The answer is so painfully clichéd that it’s almost a surprise.

The rest of the less-than-TV-quality detective action story unfolds in gunfights, car chases, explosions, foot chases, fistfights, and a speedboat chase. The only real surprise is that Phillip Michael Thomas doesn’t show up in a blazer and deck shoes.

In terms of buddy movies, such a predictable plot is standard to keep the emphasis on the chemistry between the two "buddies." In Benjamins, however, the formula doesn’t work.

Although Cube and Epps used a similar dynamic to some success in Next Friday, their characters’ worldviews are too similar this time around to provide an entertaining conflict. The working-together-despite-obvious-differences aspect of the genre is tough to buy when the men are so mutually money-mad that Reggie delights in helping Bucum gruesomely torture one of the henchmen.

This interplay between comedy and violence is awkward throughout the film. Drawn-out action scenes are broken up by dialogue constructed solely for the purpose of allowing Epp to do some stand-up shtick or Cube to fire off a barrage of wisecracks.

After proving himself a credible character actor in films like Three Kings and Trespass, and a competent writer with the Friday films, Ice Cube would be foolish to trade the social commentary found in much of his earlier work for boring HBO movie crap. So would somebody – please! – tell the Cube to think outside the box?