The real crime is not committing to your dreams…
Last week saw the release of Keanu Reeves’ most recent film, Henry’s Crime, on DVD and BluRay across the UK. Having heard about the film’s humble indie beginnings and the amount of support Reeves gave to help produce the project, I was eager to see it. I had initially intended to watch Henry’s Crime when it was first released in cinemas, but due to a plethora of misinformation, some briskly vague box offices, firmly uninformative websites, and a long pilgrimage to numerous cinemas across central London, by the time I‘d found out where it was being screened, the film's short run at the box offices had come to an end.
Turns out it was at the Trocadero, a place I only associate with tourism, Laser Quest and business ‘bonding’ activities. Who knew it was a cinema too?!
Henry’s Crime is a film about Henry (Keanu Reeves), a toll-booth attendant who has been drifting through life, just making do, with no real ambition. That is, until he’s arrested for a bank robbery he didn’t commit. During his time in jail, Henry befriends notorious con man and long-term prison inmate Max (James Caan), who believes he’s ‘living the dream’. It’s here that it first dawns on Henry that he doesn’t have a dream, and upon release he decides he’s going to rob the bank he was falsely sent to prison for robbing in the first place. “If you’ve done the time, you may as well have done the crime.”
Out of prison, Henry meets struggling actress Julie (Vera Farmiga) who immediately knocks him off his feet at about 60mph. As it turns out, there’s a buried bootlegger’s tunnel running from the bank vault to the theatre where Julie’s starring in a production of Anton Chekov’s The Cherry Orchard. With the help of Julie and former cell-mate Max, Henry lands the role of Lopakhin in the play and throughout rehearsals he also begins to uncover the tunnel running from his dressing room to the bank. However, he finds himself falling in love with Julie, and is torn between his crack-pot idea of robbing the bank and his love for her.
Reeves summarises the film perfectly as an ‘existential romantic comedy caper movie’ (a most apt description if there ever was one!). Each character is shown to have little to no aspiration, a substantial portion of self-doubt, and a stagnant mind set, trapped by their circumstances and their seeming inability to change them. However, Henry’s “cockamamie” dream of a heist causes his sudden turn-around from virtual nobody to would-be-criminal, which in turn catalyses the others. Max begins to dream of using the cash to move to Florida, where grapefruits are “as big as your head” and there’s “all you can eat sunshine.” Julie and Henry fall in love, finding themselves in a tenuous romance and Julie confronted with her fears of a serious relationship. And justice is finally served as the perpetrator of the initial heist is in turn arrested for this robbery.
The film truly goes above and beyond the call of duty, and it’s clear the cast were dedicated to their roles and the movie as a whole, making what could have been a mediocre film into a great one. Although the film has no sense of closure, and doesn’t conform to the standard cinematic template of telling a story and wrapping it up at the end (something that would perturb some, unless they thought it would lead to Henry’s Crime 2: This Time It’s Fiscal), it successfully conveys the story it wishes to tell, ending with a sense of an ongoing tale with no clues as to what’s going to happen next (much like life, for which the film is a great metaphor). The film closes with the uncertain future relationship between Henry and Julie, leaving it up to the audience to conclude whether Henry’s grand gesture is enough to win her back or not, and features quite possibly my favourite final line of any film - “Fuck, Henry.”
However, despite the film being a comedy, don’t expect to be roaring with laughter throughout. That’s not to say the humour is lacking, in fact I found it most amusing, but it’s a much more dry and subtle sense of humour than one normally finds in movies. And I greatly appreciate that, it’s much more my sense of humour than quite a lot of the films that are listed under ‘comedy’. For the most part, I find that a lot of contemporary comedies are puerile nonsense that rely too heavily on vulgarity and bodily functions with a target audience with the mental age of five and what Freud would probably consider a suspiciously overactive sex drive, so it was incredibly refreshing to watch something with a more serious humour (is that a thing, serious humour, or is that an oxymoron?).
Overall, Henry’s Crime is a thoroughly enjoyable film with an entertaining narrative and a strong undertone reminiscent of the existentialist philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre. From the everyday sense of being accosted for something that’s not our fault and the little risks we take to the hyperbolic scenario of being falsely accused of robbery and then deciding to actually commit the crime, the film has a sense of the fantastic yet the believable. Considering it was almost never made, Henry’s Crime genuinely is a cinematic triumph that’s well worth a watch.
As an aside, Reeves has said that he wants everyone to have rampant sex after seeing the film, and as much as I hate to disappoint, I am actually pleased to say that I did not. Largely because I was watching it with my mother.
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