This movie is far better than the rating it has on this site, although I think I know why. As far as light entertainment goes, its silly and fun. Owen and Freeman are both great, Sarah Foster is gorgeous and Charlie Sheen puts in a good turn as an inept part time thief. Its fun right up until, the non existent ending. The movie just ends suddenly not really explaining anything or tying up any loose ends. The dialog and music builds up to imply a twist ending, but it comes to nothing as the film abruptly ends. Maybe they ran out of money? The movie is set in and was shot in Hawaii so maybe the crew thought they'd prematurely hit some wrap party hash pipe and go sleep it off down at the beach. The movie is pretty good up until then though.

The Big Bounce (2004): Dir: George Armitage / Cast: Owen Wilson, Morgan Freeman, Sara Foster, Charlie Sheen, Gary Sinise: Nobody really makes a big bounce in this film. That is not to say that it doesn't have entertainment quality. It has a catchy premise and several plot turns that play around trust and betrayal. What works against it is its methods of paying off crime. Director George Armitage presents beautiful Hawaiian photography. He previously made Grosse Pointe Blank, another film that featured a young anti-hero caught up in crime. This is not much of an advancement. Owen Wilson is appealing as a con man working a construction job that is being protested by locals. He spent time in jail for break and enter, and he also decks a construction supervisor with a baseball bat. Morgan Freeman steals scenes as a judge who takes interest in him. Sara Foster plays a schemer who seduces Wilson into stealing $200, 000. Other roles are either pointless or underused. Charlie Sheen for example, is amusing as a foreman but more might have benefited him. In other roles are Gary Sinise who is underused and Vinnie Jones who is totally unnecessary. This is a great cast with mixed results in terms of who benefits and who is underused. Very light weight comedy with its moments of comic bliss but it is no big bounce. It does contain several little bounces though. Score: 5 ½ / 10

Jack Ryan (Owen Wilson) is your typical surfer dude in Hawaii, except he has also has a background as a thief, mostly small breaking and entering crimes where he leaves with his pockets aligned with decent cash and maybe some valuables here and there. After hitting construction foreman Lou Harris (Vinnie Jones), who works for a corrupt island Ray Ritchie (Gary Sinise), in the head with a bat, both Harris and the Ritchie's assistant Bob Rogers Jr. (Charlie Sheen) want Ryan to leave the island asap.However, a resort bungalow owner and local judge Walter Crewes (Morgan Freeman) takes a liking to Jack's laidback ways, and employs him at his resort as a handymen. This gives Jack and opportunity to get closer to Nancy Hayes (Sara Foster), a bad girl who knows how to smile and bat her eyes the right way around town. "She likes the criminal type," Walter warns Jack, but Jack doesn't listen and begins to hang around with Nancy, pulling off petty heists like the kind he is used to. Nancy wants more excitement, though. It isn't long before she gets the idea to stage a $200,000 heist on Ritchie.The Big Bounce is based off of Elmore Leonard's novel of the same name, but instead of taking place in the Michigan Thumb the story was moved to the shore of Oahu. This definitely makes the film more pleasing to look at and appealing in aesthetic, but it can't shake the fact that this film is meandering, far too directionless, and very dry as a whole. The film lacks energy and mystery for being a heist movie and adopts a persona about as lax and as breezy as its main character and location.I often haven't read many of the books when I review their film counterparts, so all I can do is tactfully assume what Leonard's novel contained. Two of the key ingredients for a crime novel are interest and, at least, some clarity of the overall mystery. The Big Bounce has a lot of characters, who are interesting on a basic level, but never seem to channel anything but basic archetypes. The actors work with what they have in their respective roles, sure, but if they were paid by lesser-known, second-rate actors, would you remember them just as well? Owen Wilson does some fine work, and Sara Foster, for her first time, channels the sexiness someone like Hayden Panettiere but possesses the personality of an Olsen twin. Arguably the best performance in the film is given by Morgan Freeman but, really, is that much of a surprise? There is a scene right near the end that has two characters, a man and a woman who should remain unspoiled, and the woman is talking to the man, confused about what their plan of action is now that they're about to be exposed. She keeps questioning the plan and the man continues to correct her. She only gets more and more confused. I think this is the closest the film comes with connecting the audience because nothing in The Big Bounce is clarified to the point of being digestible to the audience. By the end, I was trying to piece together what the ultimate goal of all of this was and what both parties were trying to achieve. Usually, in a crime drama, this is what the filmmakers want you to be doing, except instead of feeling like I had all the pieces somewhere in front of me, it felt as if I had a ten-piece puzzle and three pieces were on the floor, two were mistakenly thrown out, two were falsely advertized, and I was left with three that may or may not have been from the puzzle on the box. And so The Big Bounce goes on, and on, for a surprisingly short eighty-one minutes, going from mildly-interesting, to dull, to boring, to amusing, to somewhat funny, and the cycle repeats. Eventually, it becomes more of a scenery-chewing project for several talented actors who occasionally could be mistaken for contemplating better role choices in their future during this movie.Starring: Owen Wilson, Sara Foster, Morgan Freeman, Charlie Sheen, Gary Sinise, Vinnie Jones, Bebe Neuwirth, Willie Nelson, and Harry Dean Stanton. Directed by: George Armitage.

Now I'm thinking about something Gian told me each time I watch a movie. He told me that every image, every camera angle means something in a piece. I said it maybe is like that, but in "The Big Bounce", with Hawaii's views, I didn't find anything meaningful in the trees, the beach and the people surfing.Coming form the novelist of two books that ended in intelligent movies (Elmore Leonard; "Jackie Brown", "Out of sight"), is weird how little of intelligence this film has. Maybe it was Sebastian Gutierrez's script that couldn't correctly adapt the book, or George Armitage's fascination with the view, who forgot he had to direct a story.When we meet Jack (Owen Wilson), he begins to narrate his story, but he won't be narrator at all because he will only talk again a couple of times. Then we meet the supporting characters, participants of the robbery; because Jack's a thief and the title announces this will happen. The girl is Nancy (Sara Foster), the nemesis but also partner is Walter (Morgan Freeman) and the victim is Ray (Gary Sinise) With those characters, another movie came to my mind; "After the sunset". Brett Ratner, a skillful director, could have got a good film, but was also trapped by the same exotic wildness, the views, the women; and the lack of content turned out to be the obvious result.Both movies generate laughs, but if "The Big Bounce" wins in something is in the right choice of the elements to make the movie work. Owen Wilson is a more charismatic lead than Pierce Brosnan, even when he can't carry an entire movie by his own. And his chemistry with Sara Foster is better than Brosnan's chemistry with Salma Hayek. Plus, Foster is much prettier than Hayek and more qualified for a role like this one than the inexpressive Mexican actress (maybe Frida was the only right role for her). Sara Foster is an incredible discovery. On the other hand, the pro Freeman is a better actor than Woody Harrelson, but not funnier. The victim character is irrelevant, unluckily for the great actors that portrayed it in both films.When you watch "The Big Bounce", try to focus in the elements I'm telling you about so you can enjoy it a little bit. Believe me, you won't care about the rest.