Fact-based story of an unemployed dockworker who finds two canvas bags stamped Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, freshly fallen off the armored truck and containing $1.2 million. Finding the money is no crime; keeping it is. But he never for an instant considers returning it. "Possession is nine-tenths of the law," he has heard somewhere. John Cusack stages a lively internal war between hope and desperation, with desperation gradually wearing down its combatant and becoming increasingly external. The movie has a rather raging case of Runyonism, and a wrong-headed if not single-minded determination to be a comedy. Yet it's a nice-sized movie, a what-if fable not inflated into an urban folk legend nor stretched into a populist fairy tale, all the way to a wish-fulfilled ending. Nor is it weighted down with its real-life dénouement: suicide. It holds its focus on practicalities and provocation. Yeah? So? What would you do? With Michael Madsen, Debi Mazar; directed by Ramon Menendez. (1993) — Duncan Shepherd
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