REEL CRITICS

‘Nurse Betty’ offers hits and Mrs.

“Nurse Betty,” director Neil LaBute’s most mainstream movie to date

thanks to writers John C. Richards and James Flamberg, can be summed up

as equal parts “Fargo,” “The Purple Rose of Cairo” and “Pulp Fiction.”

As the writer/director of “Your Friends and Neighbors” and “In the

Company of Men,” LaBute has shown a propensity for amoral people and edgy

humor. This new film, while still a black comedy, has more sympathetic

characters -- particularly women -- and is not quite as demanding of its

audience.

A small-town Kansas waitress who dreams of finishing nursing school,

Betty Sizemore (Renee Zellweger) is so addicted to her hospital soap

opera that she serves her customers during the commercials. Her lout of a

husband, used car salesman Del (Aaron Eckhart), is busy hatching stupid

schemes when he’s not raking notches, literally, above the bed in his

office.

Most of the fun of this movie is in the little twists and turns of the

plot, so I don’t want to give too much away. Betty witnesses something so

horrible it throws her into a fantasy world where she believes she’s the

ex-fiancee of soap surgeon Dr. David Ravell (Greg Kinnear) and drives to

L.A. to find him. This sets off a surreal chain of events involving two

hit men.

The screen really comes alive as we watch the gentlemanly, thoughtful

Charlie (Morgan Freeman) and his eyeball-rolling, cynical protege Wesley

(Chris Rock) drive cross-country on Betty’s trail. Charlie tapes her

photo to the dash and begins to fantasize about Betty, even as he

declares she will be his “last job.”

Through a quirky set of events, Betty finally meets up with her idol,

whose real name is George and is certainly no prince. When the poor girl

quotes entire scenes from old episodes as her life story, George thinks

she’s the most amazing method actress he’s ever seen. He tries to cast

her in his show, which sparks the film’s violent climax.

The entire cast is terrific, especially Kinnear and Eckhart, who seems

to be making a career out of playing jerks in LaBute films. And

Zellweger, of “Jerry Maguire” fame, is again engaging as a woman who

remains perky in spite of her joyless life. Her sweetness and smiles are

touchingly sincere.

All that sugar can give you a toothache, however, and one longs for

more zingers from Chris Rock, like his comment on the “Bland Canyon.” He

and Morgan Freeman make a perfectly droll odd couple and are well worth

the price of admission.

* SUSANNE PEREZ, 45, lives in Costa Mesa and is an executive assistant

for a financial services company.

‘Way of the Gun’ good for video pick

One of my all-time favorite movies is “The Usual Suspects,” which won

an Oscar for best screenplay in 1996. So I looked forward to writer

Christopher McQuarrie’s newest screenplay and directorial debut, “The Way

of the Gun.” The only problem with having expectations is that you’re

oftentimes let down by them, as I was with this film.

It’s not that “Way of the Gun” wasn’t a decent movie. There were

flashes of brilliance, dizzily twisting plot complications,

double-crossings that’d make the CBS-TV Survivors proud and several

moments of stylized and superb acting.

It’s just that by the end of it all I was, frankly, kinda bored. And

that’s not good when the ending is a bang-bang-shoot-em-up, reminiscent

of a combination between the films “Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid” and

“Heat.”

“Gun” follows the final caper of two career-criminal losers, Parker

(Ryan Phillippe) and Longbaugh (Benicio Del Toro). Thinking it will be

their big score, the two kidnap Robin (Juliette Lewis), surrogate mother

for a very wealthy couple, with the intent of ransoming the unborn child.

The problem is that, unknown to the guys, the proud parents-to-be are

linked to the mafia, and the mob can’t have a money trail connecting them

through this unwelcome event.

Enter wiseguy Sarno (James Caan), who goes in search of the kidnappers

and victim, along with the two security men Jeffers and Obecks (Taye

Diggs and Nicky Katt), who were both initially hired to protect the

expectant mother. Nevermind that they are of somewhat dubious character

themselves, and that Jeffers is having an affair with the mother-to-be,

or that the real father of the expectant surrogate mother’s child is the

son of the expectant father-to-be.

Are you getting a taste for this convoluted plot yet?

And that’s the problem -- there’s just too much going on here for

McQuarrie’s own good. It’s a buddy movie, a crime drama and a

philosophical and psychological Mafia-style shoot ‘em up western without

the benefit of a good guy.

The only thing it’s missing is the kitchen sink. And it would have had

that too if McQuarrie could have figured out a way to fit it in.

So, on the Brunette scale of “Pay Full Price,” “Bargain Matinee,”

“Video Rental,” “Wait for Cable,” or “Show Me the Way of the Gun and I’ll

Show You The Way to the Door,” I give this movie, rated R for violence

and language, a strong rating of “Video Rental.”

* RICHARD BRUNETTE, 37, is a recreation supervisor with the city of

Costa Mesa and a Costa Mesa resident.