Cash (2008)
Directed by Eric Besnard

Film Review

Question: When is a homage not a homage?   Answer: When it's a blatant rip-off that offers nothing new and is so steeped in clichés and obvious cinematic references that it ends up looking like a pointless film compilation.  Such appears to be the case with Eric Besnard's second feature Ca$h, an overblown Hollywood mimic-a-thon which offers nothing more than the shallowest imitation of a thriller sub-genre that now has limited scope for originality.   Norman Jewison's self-consciously arty The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) appears to be the main source of inspiration but it is hard to miss the lazily slotted in references to other films, from George Roy Hill The Sting (1973) to Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven (2001).   The sense of  déjà vu is overwhelming, if not to say ever so slightly nauseating.

Despite the mouth-watering cast (Jean Dujardin, Jean Reno, Valeria Golino, François Berléand and Alice Taglioni is one line-up that most directors would kill for), Ca$h offers nothing for the discerning moviegoer and the lack of anything even remotely novel will kill most viewers' interest stone dead within twenty minutes.  Who is mad enough to waste time watching a bland, poorly constructed copy when they can see the (far superior) original?  French cinema can occasionally throw up a decent pastiche - as Michel Hazanavicius showed with his magnificent spoof spy thriller OSS 117: Le Caire nid d'espions (2006) - but Ca$h is just one more reminder of how difficult it is to pull off this piece of high stakes cinematic fraud.

Film Synopsis

When his brother, a small-time swindler, is killed by one of his former victims, Cash decides to take revenge by organising a swindle of his own.  Unfortunately, he soon finds that he is up against an enemy more dangerous than he had imagined - and the tables are soon turned against him...