Crimewave: Sam Raimi

During my entire filmgoing career, I have seen few, if any, films have fail as miserably and spectacularly as Sami Raimi's Crimewave.  This abomination has a plot, I guess...but the film is so annoying, so poorly executed, and so badly conceived that I could not for the life of me figure it out. From what I could discern it involved an innocent man about to be electrocuted on death row explaining why he was innocent.  But from there the film careens into nonsensical slapstack that would offend the Three Stooges (who were apparently a main "influence").  Along the way there is a long-suffering love interest, an unfortunate black man who is apparently killed several times, and two of the most scrotum-clenchingly annoying hitman that I have ever seen.  I think I know what Sam Raimi and writers Joel and Ethan Coen were going for: a pastiche of slapstick mixed with hard-boiled film noir.  The concept isn't faulty by definition.  But perhaps Raimi and the Coens were too young, too unexperienced to pull it off.  Maybe there was too much studio intervention in a project done by normally independent artists.  But whatever the explanation, Crimewave is a horrific film.  This creature is poorly shot, clumsily edited, abysmally acted, and worthy of nothing but aggravated contempt.

0/10