Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		2.5

One For the Money Blu-ray Movie Review

Let's just skip to "four" and go.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 25, 2012

The last couple of years haven’t been especially auspicious for films dealing with bounty hunters. The inventively named The Bounty Hunter paired Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler as squabbling exes who were supposedly comically brought together when Butler’s character, a hapless bail enforcement agent, was charged with tracking down Aniston’s character, an investigative reporter who skipped a bond hearing on a minor charge in order to pursue a lead. Results were tepid at best, though the film managed to rake in considerable dough, probably mostly due to the star power of its lead duo. Now we have One for the Money, a film which posits Katherine Heigl and Jason O’Mara as (guess what?) squabbling exes (more or less) who are supposedly comically brought together when Heigl’s character Stephanie Plum, a down on her luck lingerie saleswoman begs for work at her cousin Vinnie’s skip tracing firm, and ends up getting the plumb (pun intended) assignment of bringing in her long ago boyfriend Joe Morelli (O’Mara), a cop who is wanted for apparently having shot an unarmed man. The one remarkable thing about One for the Money, which is otherwise a pretty relentlessly unremarkable film, is that it is based on a hugely successful franchise of novels by Janet Evanovich, one that would seem to be tailor made for a lighter than air series of crime thrillers featuring an inexperienced (and often inept) investigator who more or less stumbles into catching the bad guys. One for the Money was evidently optioned years ago and spent many a moon in development hell, and some wags might aver it may have needed a bit more time there to bake more fully, for while not an out and out disaster, the film is notably lacking in thrills or breeziness, two elements which regularly inform Evanovich’s writing.

Janet Evanovich has built her career on smart, slightly anachronistic books which as with her long running Plum series effortlessly tweak convention to deliver surprisingly entertaining, if never incredibly deep, fare. How odd is it then that the film adaptation of One for the Money is so insistently formulaic? We get Stephanie eccentric family, highlighted by a winning turn by Debbie Reynolds as Stephanie’s out there grandmother, and we get Stephanie’s obnoxious cousin Vinnie (Patrick Fischler) and his wisecracking secretary Connie (Ana Reeder). Then we get stalwart aide Ranger (Daniel Sunjata), a kind of Dwayne Johnson-esque figure who is brought on board to show Stephanie the ropes of little things like, you know, actually knowing how to shoot at a suspect who might be attacking or trying to escape. And then we have the putative villain of the case, a thuggish boxer named Benito Ramirez (Gavin-Keith Umeh), a guy who seems to be going around killing everyone who could clear Morelli. The film is stuffed to the gills with these supposedly wonderfully colorful characters, which makes the ultra-beige results all the more surprising. A little energy is injected into the proceedings by a surprisingly effective Sherri Shepherd as a streetwalker named Lulu. John Leguizamo is also on hand as Ramirez’s manager, and anyone with half a brain (or maybe even a quarter of a brain) is going to see a supposed “twist” coming late in the film with regard to his character.

If you can get past how utterly predictable virtually every moment of One for the Money is, the film is reasonably entertaining and it provides Heigl a decent enough opportunity to show off her light comedy chops, which are agreeable enough. She does a nice job bringing Stephanie’s grit to life, though the character’s outright stupidity in a couple of key sequences may be more annoying than endearing to most viewers. There’s a certain chemistry between Heigl and O’Mara, even if O’Mara’s character is about as relentlessly stereotypical as they come. Some of the best work here is by Sunjata as the intentionally opaque Ranger, a character who just kind of appears out of nowhere several times, takes control, and then disappears into the mists of the night, off to chase more bad guys.

The biggest culprit here is probably director Julie Anne Robinson, who simply doesn’t seem to know what exactly she wants to do with this property. While there’s some nice sweep and good use of locations (with Pittsburgh somewhat humorously filling in for Evanovich’s iconic Trenton, New Jersey), on a more intimate level, Robinson simply can’t quite help the audience connect to the vast array of supporting characters, with a couple of aforementioned exceptions. The film lurches about, managing to sporadically deliver some effective moments (mostly in the comedic side of things, rarely if ever in the putative thriller side of things), but overall feeling kind of enervated and directionless (no pun intended).

One for the Money was obviously supposed to be the debut of a new tent pole franchise, one that might have appealed more to women than the typical fanboy clientele of summer sci-fi f/x laden behemoths. What might have helped here is a greater sense of danger for the plucky but vulnerable Stephanie Plum. When she has not one but two overly muscled alpha male types backing her up (even if one is her ostensible prey), there’s never much doubt that nothing really bad will ever happen to her. The problem with One for the Money is that it’s not the damsel who’s in distress, but the film itself.

One For the Money Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

One for the Money is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.40:1. This is generally a very sharp and appealing high definition presentation that offers some great location shots (Pittsburgh filling in rather surprisingly well for Trenton, New Jersey), and some good use of low key but effective interiors. The image boasts excellent clarity and even dimly lit scenes have very good shadow detail with little if any noticeable crush. There are occasional niggling artifacts that pop up, including some incipient aliasing and moiré on some of the car grilles, but otherwise this is a pleasing looking transfer that offers crisp, accurate and nicely saturated color, excellent fine detail, and an overall sharp and clear look that preserves a nicely cinematic feel, including natural grain structure.

One For the Money Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

One for the Money's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 performs exceedingly well throughout the film, capturing the movie's smaller scale dialogue driven scenes impeccably well and then upping the ante with some fantastic immersion and floorboard shaking LFE in some of the film's action sequences. Surround activity is quite consistent in these action sequences, with excellent use of surround channels to establish some nicely evocative sonic situations (the boxing gym is especially good in this regard). Gunshots zoom through the soundfield with appropriate aplomb, and fidelity is also top notch with regard to the film's score and source cues.

One For the Money Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Making the Money: Behind the Scenes (HD; 11:01) is about as generic as the film itself, with cast and crew and a few other talking heads weighing in on making this adaptation, interspersed with clips from the film.


• Bond Girls: Kicking Ass in the Bail Bonds Industry (HD; 10:28) features real life skip tracing females, and is really rather interesting. Maybe someone should make a film about them.


• Gag Reel (HD; 2:37)


• Deleted Scene (HD; 00:47) features O'Mara and Heigl making out in a car in what looks like it was intended to cap the film.


• Theatrical Trailer (HD; 2:32)

One For the Money Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

One for the Money is an odd case of having a lot of winning attributes, but never really gelling into anything that is remotely as entertaining as it should be. Heigl is an appealing performer, and she does decent enough work here establishing Stephanie Plum's pluck as well as her inherent incompetence, but the scheme Stephanie is assigned to uncover never really bristles with danger or excitement the way it should. There's simply not enough atmosphere of menace in this film to carry its supposed thriller elements along, which leaves One for the Money clinging tenuously to its comedic side, something it just barely manages to do. Evanovich fans may get more of a kick out of this offering than the public at large, but this is one of those "surefire" properties that pretty much misses the bullseye (much like Stephanie's own shooting skills). The Blu-ray offers superior video and audio, and an okay assortment of supplements. Fans may want to purchase it as a blind buy, but others would probably do best to check it out as a rental first.