Hulu exclusive “Eenie Meanie” boasts a talented ensemble in a film that has no idea what to do with their talents. Clearly made by a filmmaker who loves Quentin Tarantino and Edgar Wright (at least “Baby Driver“), this thriller suffers from both a lack of its own identity and almost zero organic tension. It’s one of those films in which everyone sounds like a screenwriter’s mouthpiece, which you can pull off if you’re Tarantino and a select few other writers in film history, but generally deflates a project of thrills, stakes, and characters to care about. The film finally arrives at some decent car chase material in the final act, and one memorable performance that’s all too brief, but, man, it’s a long drive to get there.
Samara Weaving, who has too often been the best thing about bad movies but can’t hide her boredom in this one, plays the title character, whose actual name is Edie Meaney, but she was given the titular nickname by a gangster named Nico (Andy Garcia). Edie is one of those stock characters in a thriller: the petty criminal forced to do one last job because the person she loves is an idiot. In this case, John (Karl Glusman) isn’t initially the person she loves, as she hasn’t seen him in weeks, when the film opens, as she goes to his apartment to tell him she has just learned she’s about to complete the first trimester with his child. She finds him in the middle of a deadly predicament at the end of a gun, choosing, after initially walking away, to save the obvious ne’er-do-well. Bad move.
Tying herself to John’s dilemma brings her back into the world of Nico, who forces the couple to participate in a heist: $3 million from a nearby casino. John is introduced naked, at gunpoint, and then we discover that he’s keeping a card counter (Randall Park) in a box. And John is the love interest. Why shouldn’t we root for Edie to run the other way again? Writer/director Shawn Simmons never quite answers this question, pushing his leads together despite their lack of chemistry or audience interest in seeing them ride off into the sunset together.
It’s a factor of the biggest problem with “Eenie Meanie,” which is that none of these people are interesting or fun enough to warrant spending 94 minutes with them. Weaving’s natural charisma can only carry a movie so far, but it’s almost a feat to make generally engaging performers like Marshawn Lynch, Chris Bauer, Mike O’Malley, and Dean Winters this boring. Only Steve Zahn, who appears briefly in the prologue and returns about an hour in as Edie’s crappy dad, feels like he’s done any work in the back story department, imbuing his brief screen time with actual presence. Everything else has the nutritional value of a fast-food cheeseburger, but it’s not even as tasty.
Ultimately, “Eenie Meanie” is a collection of clichés in search of an actual movie. Too often, Shawn Simmons mistakes profanity for toughness and violent outbursts for plot, trapping us with what is mostly a bunch of loathsome idiots for 94 minutes without the craft or a Tarantino or the visual acumen of a Wright to make it worth the captivity.
Now on Hulu.
