Be Cool

REVIEW
Lethargic, lackluster follow-up to 1995’s crisp Hollywood/gangland satire Get Shorty finds goombah-loanshark-cum-über-producer Chili Palmer (Travolta) nixing the slimy movie business and venturing into the vicious arena of gangsta hip-hop, a dangerous underworld populated by the well-armed hooligans of rival rap labels who all worship and extol the ill-perceived virtues of the movie Scarface — for all the same wrong reasons. Chili becomes inexplicably enamored with a rising starlet (real life R&B artist Milian, affable but bland) who’s slaving away under contract for a veritable skeezeball (Keitel — wait, didn’t he play himself in Get Shorty?) and his wannabe-black underling (Vaughn, whose inverted-race-baiting shtick quickly becomes irritable). Cedric the Entertainer co-stars as a fuming but well-mannered rap producer looking to get paid, and there’s a subplot dealing with a gang of Russian thugs and a patrol of feds. Uma Thurman’s here, too, playing the winsome widow of a slain record exec who helps Chili navigate the music biz…and who gets to cut a rug with him à la Pulp Fiction (one of the film’s sole moments of bliss). Like its predecessor, Be Cool is based on a novel by Elmore Leonard, yet the convoluted screenplay lacks not only the crackling repartee and jackrabbit pace of Get Shorty, but also its likable gallery of smarmy hoodlums, crafty scam artists and haughty prima donnas (and all those tiny precious moments of absurd character gradually revealed through their quirkiness). The cynical wit and goofball charms imbued by Shorty director Barry Sonnenfeld are desperately absent here. Credited to director F. Gary Gray, Be Cool is utterly devoid of personality — anyone could’ve directed this movie — though we give three snaps for The Rock, saucing it up fabulously as a mountainous, flamingly gay bodyguard with aspirations to act.