The Whole Nine Yards

Herald rating: **

Cast: Bruce Willis, Matthew Perry, Rosanna Arquette, Michael Clarke Duncan, Natasha Henstridge

Director: Jonathon Lynn

Rating: M (violence, offensive language sex)

Running Time: 98 minutes

Opens: Now showing Village Hoyts cinemas

Review: Russell Baillie

Those who put this hitman comedy together - and it certainly feels like one that's been committee-assembled as opposed to created - must have thought they had plenty of ammunition.

In their magazine was marquee-reliable Willis, the added value of one of the funnier Friends (Perry) and a script, which on the face of it, probably read like something lifted from the pages of Elmore Leonard (Get Shorty, Out of Sight) with its tale of hitmen, mob revenge, double cross and love blooming in desperate circumstances.

However, The Whole Nine Yards is pretty feeble throughout, a black comedy which blands towards grey and can't seem to get its cross-hairs on too many jokes.

The overly jovial tone is largely down to the delivery of director Lynn who, since leaving Britain and the likes of the small screen's Yes, Minister! has made a habit of cosy Hollywood comedies like My Cousin Vinny, The Distinguished Gentleman and Doc Hollywood.

Trouble is, while this has plenty of amusing gags - well, ok, Perry falls down on a fairly regular basis - its criss-crossed story is devoid of any sense of tension or menace.

That's not helped by a serious run of plot holes and convolutions apparent from the first reel, or Arquette's laughable French Canadian accent given a delivery that can only be described as "squirrel-like."

She's married to Perry's hapless debt-ridden Montreal dentist Nicholas "Oz" Ozemansky and, having found out their new neighbour is Jimmy "The Tulip" Tudeski, blackmails her spouse, forcing him to tell the hitman's peeved former Chicago bosses of his whereabouts.

Then it gets complicated, if not particularly intriguing, in a web which involves Jimmy's hitman colleague and friend (Duncan), the wife he refuses to divorce (the decorative Henstridge), Oz's dentist receptionist (an amusing and luminous Peet from telly's Jack and Jill) who's also a hitman groupie, and a very large sum of money.

Willis smirks his way through while Perry, when not being the fall-guy, does do enough to make you forget his small-screen day job.

But it still comes on like a watered-down version of a much-better - and better-assembled movie. The Whole Nine Yards just doesn't measure up.