ca$h

i felt like watching something random and this one has been on my shelf for a while. it was surprisingly good.

sean bean robs a bank but gets caught so tosses a briefcase full of money off a bridge where pre-thor chris hemsworth picks it up. he takes it home to his wife, victoria profeta, they spend a bunch of it, then sean bean's meaner twin brother (also played by sean bean) turns up and demands it back, one cent at a time.

sounds like a good idea for a neat, low-budget thriller, and that it is. it's also a metaphor for the financial crisis. this film poses the question, what if instead of borrowing money from a bank or racking up purchases on a credit card, we borrowed money from sean bean with a gun. that's the comparison this film seems to be making, and it's a good one because it makes you think about all that debt and how would you pay it back if someone forced you to do so at gunpoint? yes, i write this as someone in a lot of debt.

what makes this work is that profeta and hemsworth do a great job at getting you on their side, despite their initial carelessness. you're with them all the way. hemsworth also does a good job of not looking like he could beat sean bean in a fight, which he obviously could because he's thor.

where the film gets really interesting is when the couple are forced to turn to crime to pay off the rest of the debt, and they start to enjoy it. ca$h is kind of a film about everything that's wrong with capitalism and for that i quite enjoyed it.