#68: All About the Benjamins

Release Date: March 8th, 2002

Format: DVD

Written by: Ice Cube and Ronald Lang

Directed by: Kevin Bray

1.5 Stars

Question: Why am I watching a largely forgotten early ‘00s action-comedy buddy flick on a Sunday evening? 

Answer: One of my students gifted me a couple mystery DVD grab bags from Fingerprints, and there are some real doozies for me to work through, All About the Benjamins being one of them.

It’s basically what I thought it would be. Ice Cube stars in (and co-wrote, surprisingly) and Kevin Bray directs this flick, about a bounty hunter who teams up with a small-time crook (Mike Epps) to catch some diamond thieves. Oh, and the crook and his girlfriend (Eva Mendes) have a winning lottery ticket for $60 million that he’s accidentally dropped into the diamond thieves’ van, and they’re trying to retrieve that too. It’s all pretty stupid. 

Actually, derivative is the word here. Derivative of the music video auteur style birthed by directors such as David Fincher, Brett Ratner, and Michael Bay a decade earlier (slow mo, gun violence, camera pans, zooms, kinetic editing). Derivative of post-Tarantino comedy violence (or it attempts it; there is a scene of Ice Cube and Mike Epps torturing a diamond thief as they have him handcuffed to a shower rod; it’s more tough to watch than funny). And in the case of Mike Epps, derivative of 20 years of (better) performances from Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence and Chris Tucker as the comedic relief in “urban” action movies. 

All About the Benjamins is a time capsule of a certain type of genre movie that Hollywood was green lighting in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s, so it has that going for it, but I’d say stick to Bad Boys or 48 Hours or Rush Hour, the movies it’s trying to be, instead.