It’s easy to appreciate the effort one might put in just for the sake of wrapping up a movie and calling it a job. It’s commendable if you get in the position to have creative control over a project or film that you are proud to share with others. ‘Just because you can’ is not a valid excuse for having John Travolta, Kristin Davis, Lukas Haas, and Noel Gugliemi to name a few, one of the best character actors in the business on board with the project. Cash Out has a phenomenal cast, yet those talents are wasted with each moment.
God, you can definitely see that Travolta wished the plot dictated for more. Apart from the dull story, he is a phenomenal presence in the film, filled with intensity and piercing eyes, which is not enough, given that he gets to do… well, not much of anything, really. He infuses a high-profile thief’s soul in the character, Mason Goddard, who is at a moment of quitting The Life, but his junior varsity brother Shawn (Lukas Haas) is deliberately getting on a bank score on his own and ruining that. The aim: a flash drive containing some salacious information that attracts attention. When Mason is informed whose dirty laundry it is, he simply turns his back and walks away, although the prospect of getting a profitable return for a not so great scheme is just too appealing for him.
DC Movie Critiques, DC Movie Evaluations, DC Film Assessors, Eddie Pasa, Picture Analysts, Film Analysis and Criticism, Review of Film, Analysis or Critique of a Film, Saban Films, Cash OutImagine the dramatic expression now: “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in”, correct? Oseni and Richardson even throw in the romantic partner who is also an undercover agent for good measure. Mason has just escaped the organization as Amelia Deckard (Kristin Davis) has released her government information ties to him and letting him and his crew slip through our fingers gives her another opportunity to catch them. Initially, it is set up that Shawn takes the blame and she helps the team by leaking information about the score but never thinks Mason would be so foolish as to walk right into the center of the action where everything is a disaster. The way this plays out in the film seems more like a spare to me than an extension of the plot that was urgent; when Mason asks her, “Was any of it real?”, it is baffling which any of it was since we of course saw their romance briefly because they are artists, oh yes, the title sequence, take place in the fictional plot.
Ives is a mononymous filmmaker who takes almost a single linear tale over several needless stretches of time, bombarding us with many aerial shots that were not very necessary for the plot and even placing one inside a bank. However, no one stays glued to their seats for the rest of the parts except for John Travolta. It’s all show and no go; even in this little movie, the steely guts of Travolta allow us to adopt a willing suspension of disbelief with ease. The script is so infantile that he has to almost by himself drag Cash Out since there is no one else to put it on. There is no one who is going to lament over such a haphazard production; no scars are formed, no bonds are formed through shared experiences or through shared tea bags since the film was shot.
Cash Out: Good Story, Nice Action, But Not Amazing Saban Films. Although one could argue that the script is “lean,” it is still made out of description that there is some meat on the bones. In fact, for any heist movie, the meat is essential and without it, the audience interest and engagement drops. And Cash Out does have it. What exists is only atm in a single location. Everything else is superfluous. It’s just mindless. If you think this is simply a low-budget crime thriller, you might, however, be much disappointed even at that. The main heist is as undercooked as the script ‘under-cooked’ because all I can see is Mason and his gang who seem to be incompetent and bungling being on the Most Wanted list. Considering this reality, such assumptions make me shrug.
No matter how hard John Travolta stretches his vibes with the rest of the cast, Cash Out is bad by the numbers. To be fair, he is still kind of cool and brings some goodwill to the film, but such goodwill is soon drowned out by sheer illogical moments of the movie (the hardest suspension of disbelief is reserved for the ending) and a script that fails on so many levels. Mason and Travolta are the only ones who make it and matter in the movie, and cast in the movie as actors (who all, for what it is worth, attempt to make everything go) somewhat, we do not get quite enough time with them because the screenplay has decided there is no need for them. A heist flick is somewhat more than just a few pretty faces and in the case of Cash Out, it doesn’t have any.
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