Safe, Cracked

Everyone here walks the finest of lines: Play it too straight, and this becomes derivative gruel--sodden homage at best, and only if you're generous. Smirk it up too much, and you've got Cannonball Run on your hands, well before the MINIs chase an armored car through Los Angeles traffic. The original was about the heist itself, planned by mystery men for inexplicable reasons; it was dying to cut to the chase, till everything else became superfluous filler. Here the chase, down Hollywood Boulevard and through the shiny new subways of Los Angeles, feels like a bonus, something earned rather than merely borrowed.