Friday, September 24, 2021

Family Business (1989)

IMDb plot summary: An ex professor offers Adam $1,000,000 to "get" some plasma from a high tech company's lab. Adam asks his criminal grandpa for help. Can they convince Adam's now honest dad to join?
Directed by Sidney Lumet. Starring Sean Connery, Dustin Hoffman, Matthew Broderick, and Rosanna DeSoto.

There are some interesting tonal shifts in this movie. For the first 2/3, it's heavily comedic, with the dynamic between the three characters played very much for laughs. And then in the final third, it shifts into something more poignant and sad and almost makes me feel a little bad for having had so much fun in the first place. It ultimately balances that shift really well. Crime movies are so not my genre, but if I've learned anything from watching through Sidney Lumet's filmography, it's that they can be really compelling if the characters are charismatic and given some stakes I can really sink my teeth into. This was an enjoyable one that I'm glad I checked out.

How it entered my Flickchart:
Family Business > Hustle & Flow
Family Business < Woman in the Dunes
Family Business > Charlie St. Cloud
Family Business < Steven Universe: The Movie
Family Business < Serendipity
Family Business < His Girl Friday
Family Business > Nobody's Fool
Family Business < Flight of the Navigator
Family Business > For a Few Dollars More
Family Business > Gone in 60 Seconds
Family Business > The Abyss
Final spot: #1253 out of 3445, or 64%.

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