Crime Spree is a stellar example of a potentially good film gone down the tubes. A film with Gérard Depardieu and Harvey Keitel in starring roles certainly has some potential, but a horrible script and infantile humor sabotages any chance that Crime Spree might have had at making a score.

The premise is your typical "clueless crooks get a chance at the big time." Depardieu's character is a small-time Paris thief who works with his friends... except that his friends are so incompetent that they haven't pulled off a successful job in ages. Their boss gives them one last chance: go to Chicago for a jewel robbery. Along the way, the little group of friends gets several new members added, including a hot-shot kid and a psychotic gunman named Zéro who refers to himself in the third person. Once they get to the United States, of course, nothing goes right, and soon they're embroiled in mob affairs with the Chicago boss of the Mafia (Keitel) on their tail.

You would think that this would be at least mildly amusing, if not stellar. You would be wrong. Nothing works right here: the dialogue is stilted, the situations are awkward, and the plot is contrived. And worst of all is the humor. Crime Spree is clearly intended to be primarily a comedy, but evidently humor is a difficult concept. Many scenes try to play up the humor in the French crooks running into different customs in the U.S., but it just feels mis-handled; these scenes would possibly have been amusing to a French audience who would laugh at the strange U.S. customs they encounter, but for a U.S. audience, the reaction is just... flat. So they don't realize they can't order beer in a pancake house. Ooh, how funny. Or not.

The film doesn't rely on cultural misunderstandings for its comedy, though: physical humor is really the number one card that Crime Spree plays, over and over again. We're talking about really low-level stuff here, like people accidentally bonking their heads on things; I'm surprised no one slipped on a banana peel. The characters all behave like children, with plenty of squabbling and sniping (which I think we're also supposed to find amusing, though it's not).

With the childish behavior of the actors, the slapstick comedy, and the presence of a pan-and-scan version on the flip side of the DVD, it almost seems like Paramount is setting up this film as a "family" movie. Yet it's hardly family fare: it's full of unpleasantness and violence, and certainly is not something that would be at all suitable for younger viewers.

Crime Spree tries hard, desperately hard, to be funny and hip, even throwing in references to movies like Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs. But it just doesn't work. Not at all. It's just not funny, and it's not interesting. End of story.

The DVD

Video

Crime Spree looks oddly lackluster, considering that it does have an anamorphic widescreen transfer. I think the main problem is that there's a pan-and-scan version also on the disc, because the most noticeable defect is the substantial amount of compression artifacts. They're everywhere, and they're very obvious: not just in long-distance shots, or ones with lots of detail, but also in close-up shots. It's quite distracting. Colors also don't look quite right; although the contrast seems to be normal, the color palette feels flat and slightly unnatural.

The portions of the film in which the characters speak French have burned-in subtitles in English.

Audio

The sound quality here is adequate; there are no real flaws, but there's nothing to make the soundtrack stand out, either. Though it has a Dolby 5.1 as well as a Dolby 2.0 track, there's little use of surround, and at times the dialogue is a bit flat-sounding. A Spanish 2.0 track is also included.

Extras

Two special features are included: a full audio commentary from the director and the producer of the film, and a trailer for the film.

Final thoughts

Crime Spree may have a couple of good actors in it, but the film is a dud. Unfunny and definitely not entertaining, this isn't even worth a rental; there are much better ways of occupying two hours of your time. Skip it.