The Black Market, Just Turned Grey!
The Crew is a 2000 crime comedy film directed by Michael Dinner, and written by Barry Fanaro.
The titular Crew is a group of four wiseguys: Bobby Bartellemeo (Richard Dreyfuss), Joey "Bats" Pistella (Burt Reynolds), Mike "The Brick" Donatelli (Dan Hedaya), and Tony "Mouth" Donato (Seymour Cassel). Except that, instead of the glory days of the '50s, they are now senior citizens living in Miami. Worried that they may lose their apartment rooms due to a landlord raising rent for the new, young tenants, the Crew gets the idea to fake a mob hit in the lobby...only to find out that the corpse they used was the father of a drug cartel's boss. Things quickly get quite crazy for the men as they try to avoid not only the Cartel's wrath, but also avoid the ongoing police investigation...which just happens to be led by Bobby's long-lost daughter.
Not to be confused with the comic series or the racing game.
This film makes use of the following tropes:
- The Cartel: The film's major threat.
- Crazy Enough to Work: Their plan to stay at the hotel is to fake a mob-style murder using a dead body with its head blown off. The murder would scare the younger tenants into moving out while the landlord lowers his rent to keep the foursome from leaving. In his narration, Bobby concedes that their plan is crazy. But, given the alternative is to end up on the streets, it was better than nothing. Dumb Luck aside, it even works.
- Damn, It Feels Good to Be a Gangster!: How the Crew felt about their old jobs.
- Dirty Cop: Olivia's ex-boyfriend Steve is working for Ventana.Miguel: He's working for us?
- Even Evil Has Standards: Bobby is an old school gangster and has no love for people who make money dealing drugs.
- Ironic Nickname: "Mouth", who rarely talks. An exception, it turns out, is right after he has sex.
- Locked Out of the Loop: Ventana's inside man apparently only speaks directly to Ventana and not his underlings as none of them recognize him.
- Long-Lost Relative: Due to his ex-wife remarrying while he was in jail, Bobby hasn't seen his daughter Olivia for about 30 years.
- A Match Made in Stockholm: Pepper Lowenstein ends up falling for "Mouth" after the Crew decides to just kidnap her instead of kill her.
- Ms. Fanservice:
- Ferris/Maureen is introduced while dancing in her underwear at a strip club and sports a tight minidress in a later scene.
- Olivia's legs and feet are shown off in a brief scene.
- Never My Fault: Ventana blames Miguel's stupidity for kidnapping Steve since he was on Ventana's payroll. However, Ventana clearly had kept his underlings out of the loop as we see Steve was reporting directly to him. Even if Miguel did know, they had to grab him along with the others anyway or they'd blow his cover. Upon seeing him, Ventana could've just taken Miguel out of the room, told him who he was and then separated him from the group under a pretense. But he isn't wrong about Miguel being stupid when he blurts out the connection in front of an honest cop in plain English.
- Oh, Crap!:
- The morning that the foursome find out that the body they used to orchestrate the fake murder was Ventana's father.
Bobby Bartellemeo: (reading the newspaper) Louis Ventana, father of reputed South American Drug—father of reputed South American Drug Lord...Bobby Bartellemeo: (narrating) Now, as bad news goes, this was "start your car and it goes boom" bad.(We then see the other Oh, Crap! reactions, except for Mike, who finds the whole thing hilarious.)- When Bobby reads the latest paper and finds that Ventana's house also burned down.
Bobby Bartellemeo: Drug Lord's house?!(Cuts to Ventana, who quietly puts on his sunglasses while his two underlings are sitting across from him visibly having their own Oh, Crap! moment. Then we see they are sitting exactly where they were last night in the yard with the now-smoldering ruins of his house in the background.) - Open Mouth, Insert Foot: Olivia's ex-boyfriend Steve literally does this with Olivia's foot in an attempt at seduction. It falls flat on its face when she confronts him with evidence that he was cheating on her while her big toe is in his mouth. Also, she hates the foot thing.
- Private Investigator: Bobby hires a private detective to look for his long lost daughter. The man is unable to find much information, and tries to convince Bobby not to spend more of his money on an effort that is so unlikely to succeed.
- Retired Outlaw: The titular Crew all worked for The Mafia.
- Retired Badass Roundup: And the climax involves them calling all their old coworkers for help.
- Rule of Three: At three points does "Bats" get knocked on the head, almost drown, and have a clever idea when revived.
- Spit Take: Bobby literally spits out all his medications when he reads the headline about the body that they planted at their apartment building was the father of a South American Drug Lord.
- Stalker with a Crush: Steve, Olivia's ex-boyfriend and fellow officer, won't leave her alone and keeps trying to seduce her (while eyeing other women) and gets involved in one of her cases. Since he's a Dirty Cop working for Ventana, he's either putting on an act to deflect attention from himself or he's just plain stupid and won't take a hint. Considering he went on the run in a brand-new and highly visible yellow Porsche, it could be the latter.
- Telecom Tree: One of the retired Mafia members uses the fact that he has kept in touch with every other former Mafioso to have retired to the greater Miami area to gather a posse to raid the base of a crime lord who had kidnapped the daughter of another member of the group. This leads to a hilarious scene where a freighter owned by a drug lord is attacked by a busload of gun-toting senior citizens.
- Too Dumb to Live: Played for Laughs
- For a dreaded Drug Lord, Ventana and his underlings are really dumb. His henchman Miguel can't even tie a knot (which turns an intimidating moment into a funny one). Ventana's security is completely lacking despite his boast to the contrary. On top of which, they should know better than to kidnap the Dirty Cop that was working for them, put him in the same room with his honest-cop ex-girlfriend and then flat-out say that he works for them (in Spanish and then Miguel blurts it out in English).
Ventana:: (in Spanish) Miguel, why are you so stupid? Why? Because this guy is working for us.Miguel: (surprised and in English) He's working for us?(Olivia gives Steve a "WTF" look)Steve: Baby, come on—(Olivia kicks him in the face with her left foot, Matrix-style,)Steve: Ow! Baby, you think that I—(Olivia kicks him in the face again, knocking him over on his back)Ventana: Hey, come on!Olivia: Still like my foot, honey?Ventana: (exasperated) Get him out of here!- Steve shouldn't have been blatantly stealing evidence and classifying reports related to an active criminal case; which drew Olivia's suspicion. Not to mention, he really should have avoided Olivia and handled things from the background.
- Steve really should've dumped the conspicuous yellow Porsche Boxter after he was outed as a Dirty Cop and went on the run. Que a half-a-dozen squad cars led by his ex-girlfriend chasing him down.
- True Companions: The four main characters spent years as partners in crime in New York before retiring to the same Florida community.
- Wicked Stepmother: Inverted; a wicked stripper wants the Crew to off her stepmom. They end up making amends in the end.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Steve theorizes that the person responsible for killing the Drug Lord's father and burning down his home is a psycho from abroad who watched Scarface one too many times. Than again, no one could've thought that Ventana's involvement was due to dumb luck.
