Review No.35: One for the Money

After watching a couple of low rent titles I was after something with a big Hollywood star that wasn't too taxing and I found that and so much more in One for the Money. After watching this film I find it completely surprising that Katherine Heigl has become as popular as she has and I'd give the credit to Judd Apatow for casting her in Knocked Up despite the fact that she has since knocked her character in that movie by saying that she found it patronising. Though she has headlined movies before they have always had a familiar male co-star to stand alongside her on the poster be it Ashton Kutcher, James Marsden or Gerard Butler however here she is all on her own. She plays Stephanie Plum an out-of-work lingerie saleswoman who gets a job at her cousin's acting as a bail bondsman. Though her cousin only wants her to track down low maintenance cases she blackmails him into tracking down Joe Morelli a corrupt cop who she once ran down with a car after he tricked her into losing her viginity. Things turn into a knockabout comedy when Morelli finds out that Stephanie is out to get him and the two play a cat and mouse game which inevitably sees her getting naked at one point and in her bra later on. Obviously because Morelli is the romantic interest he isn't the real bad guy and Stephanie basically turns into a copper to track down the real bad guy on the way learning how to shoot in a gun in the hilarious shooting sequence as well as befriending a pair of prostitutes one of them played by The View's Sherri Shephard.

While I've got no problem as Heigl as part of an ensemble she's no lead actress in her own right and this isn't a romcom where both parties are on an equal footing. Jason O'Mara as Morelli does gruff quite well but his part is just popping up occssionally surprising Stephanie and then going on his way again. In fact I thought Stephanie was better off with her mentor Ranger, played by Rescue Me's Daniel Sunjata, a strong and comforting pair of hands who had more chemistry with Heigl than O'Mara. Star power is provided by John Leguizamo and Debbie Reynolds who have a couple of scenes each while Shephard's role is that of sassy informant something that works for her quite well. There was nothing particularly wrong with One for the Money it was slickly produced and well shot but I never laughed once or believed that these two could ever be a couple. It reminded me of a mix of two awful films from 2010 one was the Godawful The Bounty Hunter while the other was Killers which starred Miss Heigl in the leading role. It just left me thinking that Heigl isn't a strong presence and I didn't once believe that she would go through what Stephanie did plus her New Jersey accent kept slipping when she had to engage in scenes full of action. The scary thing is that One for the Money is adapted from the first in a series of books and I'm guessing if this does well at the box office then there could be two more films with Heigl in the lead which is a terrifying prospect.

Verdict: A romantic, action, comedy hybrid that left me cold yet was well produced and not completly terrible gets a generous 3.5/10