Review: Boiler Room

Dir: Ben Younger

Cast: Giovanni Ribisi, Vin Diesel, Ben Affleck

Category: Crime

Plot: Giovanni Ribisi is a street smart kid who becomes involved in a fraudulent stock scheme. Fast talking salesmen peddle worthless stock in a classic "boiler room" scheme.

DVD Special Features: Region 1 encoding (US and Canada only), Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Dolby, Commentary by director John Frankenheimer, Deleted Footage, Full-screen and widescreen anamorphic formats.

When a weak movie has alternate endings on the DVD I love it. You can at least see what other options were out there. As always the deleted scenes are best left on the cutting room floor.

The Good: Ben Affleck has a bit part in this movie and kicks huge ass. His cameo is over the top but still fantastic. I would have loved to see more of Affleck' s character, but unfortunately you only get a few minutes of him sprinkled throughout this movie.

I really like the first half of this film. Somewhere in the second half the plot starts to unravel.

The Bad: Don' t attempt to figure out the scam that these guys are running. It doesn' t really matter and will only distract you from the rest of the film. The director makes the scam complicated enough to confuse you if you aren't really paying attention.

I don' t know if Giovanni has what it takes to be a leading man. I really like the supporting cast but I felt he fell short. In past films Giovanni has done a good job as a supporting actor but unfortunately I think he bit off more than he could chew. His name also really pisses me off. With a name like Giovanni he should be more Italian than the pope (wait a minute, his is Polish... oops).

Bottom Line: If you sell anything for a living give it a look.

Rating: Two cocktails.