Stephanie Plum (Katherine Heigl) needs money but has no skills. Ain’t that America/you and me. I guess prostitution isn’t an actual option. Funny, she has no problem with prostitutes, nor showing her body. Well, what’s a profession for the unskilled to earn quick but isn’t sexual in nature? One for the Money says, “Bounty Hunter.” I guess I’d give that conclusion some credit for originality, except of course that this film looks a great deal like the 2010 disaster more appropriately entitled The Bounty Hunter.
One for the Money never really stops insulting you. Short for cash, Stephanie becomes a bounty hunter. OK. She has no weapon; she has no plan and she even seems above the ability to say, “Please” when asking a bail jumper to come with her. She’ll take you to jail on, what? The strength of her personality? Lacking both skill and experience, she nonetheless manages to track down a high-priced wanted felon in her very first morning of work. Yeah. Boy, it’s a good thing no previous bounty hunter thought to use the phone book. After delving through the requisite making-a-fool-of-Katherine-Heigl scenes (a must in every Heigl film), we get that wonderful film experience where a noob creates pain because she simply doesn’t know how to do her job … and the film is good with that. “Got a hooker hospitalized because you don’t know what you’re doing? Meh, that’s gonna happen.” Yeah, but you could at least take some responsibility.
Another irksome note is Plum keeps calling Joe Morelli (Jason O’Mara), her target/love interest, “Morelli.” I don’t care how the book was written; this bugs me on several levels. First off, she knew him in high school. How many people from high school do you refer to by his/her last name? For me, it was none, almost certainly because everybody I knew had siblings and everybody I didn’t might have siblings. Calling your friend, “Jones” when his brother is standing right next to him makes no sense. Well, Jersey Italian neighborhood; I doubt these guys have any sibs. Secondly, she slept with him. How many sex partners do you call by their surname? Again, for me, the answer is none. Or yeah, she also ran him over with a car after sleeping with him. This, apparently, isn’t just a writing gag. It comes down to this – here’s somebody you know, or knew, really well, and you call him by the same name that you would if he were just a local palooka. It doesn’t work. And the dynamic thus undermines the credibility of both story and character.
This is probably Katherine Heigl’s best vehicle since Knocked Up. You might note I still would place it well within suckage circle on the Venn Diagram. I think I’ve come to terms with Katherine. I simply don’t believe her in any role. At this point, I think she’d have trouble playing herself. That being said, she is likeable. You’d think the two would be incompatible, but truth is Hollywood is stuffed with actors and actresses whose only talent is being likeable: Goldie Hawn, Michael Cera, Martin Lawrence, Drew Barrymore, Meg Ryan, Ashton Kutcher. It’s not a bad thing. In fact, it’s the best attribute any actor can have. Ask, say, Zooey Deschanel or John Cusack. “Adapt or die” doesn’t always prevail.
It’s not like I wanted to enjoy One for the Money, but I did keep looking for reasons to like it more than, say, Killers or The Ugly Truth:
Katherine’s Heigl’s character was believable.
The plot was remotely plausible.
The director didn’t embarrass Heigl at every turn.
There was something funny.
There wasn’t a callous disregard for minor players.
Katherine Heigl didn’t get put in a helpless, quasi-sexual position.
It wasn’t directed by Robert Luketic.
There we go. You earned your star, non-Robert, congratulations.
Rated PG-13 , 91 Minutes
D: Julie Anne Robinson
W: Stacy Sherman, Karen Ray, and Liz Brixius
Genre: New Jersey fantasy
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Urban housewives
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Bounty hunters
