30 Minutes or Less is a dark comedy based slightly on real events. In 2003, Brian Wells, a pizza deliveryman from Erie, Pa. lost his life when two men coerced him into strapping a bomb to his chest and forcing him to rob a bank. I remember watching this on television when Wells was outside yelling to the police, "Why isn't nobody trying to come get this thing off me?" The bomb later exploded while he was still wearing it.
Steve Elzer, a senior vice president of Sony Pictures, responded to Wells' family's displeasure that this film seems based on Brian Wells, saying: "Neither the filmmakers nor the stars of '30 Minutes or Less' were aware of this crime prior to their involvement in the film," he said. "The writers were vaguely familiar with what had occurred and wrote an original screenplay that does not mirror the real-life tragedy."
The script they wrote is about two middle aged slacker idiots who kidnap a pizza delivery guy, strap a bomb to his chest, and inform him that he has mere hours to rob a bank or else they detonate the bomb he is wearing. If he goes to the police they will blow him up because they will be keeping an eye on him. Hmmm, sounds kinda familiar.
Eisenberg plays Nick, a pot smoking pizza delivery guy who seems to have absolutely no prospects in life. His best friend and room mate, Chet, is a school teacher. Nick is in love with his sister, Kate, who has a job opportunity in another state. The movie never says why Nick is pretty much a loser while Chet went to college and has a real job.
The movie also tells the story of Dwayne, the son of a Michigan Lottery winner, who also does nothing all day but drugs and bitch about his dad to his best friend Travis. He has a plan to open a whore house once his dad dies and he inherits his money. To get the 100 grand to hire an assassin he puts his bomb plan into action.
30 Minutes or Less is a dark comedy in that people get hurt and die. I did not laugh nearly as much as my teenage sons. Perhaps I am getting too old for these types of movies but it flunks my first rule. The lead characters are not all that likable. Nick and his antagonist Dwayne, are not that different. Both are shown contributing little if anything positive to the world around them. Both have a friend who would likely be better off without them. There some laughs to had here. The bank robbery scene is one of the funniest, but not because of Eisenberg or the over rated Aziz Ansari. The customers and employees reaction to the robbery make it work.
Jesse Eisenberg has one talent as an actor, nerd charm. It worked for him in Zombieland and The Social Network, but here I never cared what happened to him. Considering he has a bomb strapped to him most of the film, I probably should have. An early scene has a throwaway Facebook joke. You should never remind your audience that they once made a better movie.
Danny McBride has an even less acting repertoire. He always plays variations of the same halfwit. He is one of those actors that looks familiar, because he is in lots of films, but has yet to become a household name. He speaks such impressive lines here as, "Sometimes fate pulls out its big ol' cock and slaps you right in face."
A dark comedy works best when a "normal" person is forced into a dark situation. The script intends for that person to be Nick, but he does not even have the common sense to just go to the police and try to get them to diffuse the bomb. How hard would it be to figure out who is following him? Without much of a sympathetic lead the movie loses some of its humor. Just as in real life, when investigators later determined that Brian Wells was in on the bomb plan, we lost sympathy for him.
