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WHO IS CLETIS TOUT? Send This Review to a Friend
Off-beat doesn't necessarily mean good. "Who is Cletis Tout?" is a quirky little crime story that has its occasionally clever and amusing bits, but it grows somewhat tiresome over the long haul.
It's the work of writer-director Chris Ver Wiel, who has an eye for what's different and kooky. Take Critical Jim (Tim Allen), his hit man. Jim is holding as prisoner in a hotel room Trevor Finch (Christian Slater), whom he is waiting to shoot on getting a signal that payment has been deposited. Otherwise, Jim will let him go. The hit man is fascinated with old movies and keeps quoting from them. Finch says he has a story to tell, and his would-be assassin asks that he pitch the story to him, as he would to a Hollywood executive. As Finch narrates the tale of how he got to his present spot, Jim keeps interrupting him with demands that he change the plot to make it more appealing.
Finch's story unfolds in flashback. In prison for forgery and fraud, he teams up with Micah (Richard Dreyfus), a magician and jewel thief with diamonds hidden on the outside after he stole them 20 years before. They break out together and change their identities, but it is Finch's ill luck that the identity he is given is that of a mob-slain journalist, Cletis Tout. The assumption that Tout isn’t really dead marks Finch as a target. Micah is reunited with his daughter Tess (Portia de Rossi), which, as might be expected, sets up a romance with Finch after the initial bouts of hostility between them. Always lurking are the hidden diamonds and the possibility of exposing a murder while criminals wanting to cover it up.
The cleverest bit is the role of Critical Jim, but his movie interruptions start to be boring and cumbersome after the initial freshness. There are a couple of bumbling assassins, myriad complications and shifts in time, including backups with repeat conversations to identify where the story is and where it has come from. Nothing is too complicated to follow, but the filmmaker strains to be cute. The cast is generally fine, and Billy Connolly has a funny bit as Savian, a corrupt coroner who arranged the switches in identity, but RuPaul overdoes a drag queen role.
"Who is Cletis Tout?" is a catchy title, but the film itself is only catchy some of the time. A Paramount Classics release.
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