One for the Money Reviews (2012)

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Anyone who’s ever worked in a bookstore could probably go through a litany of all the bizarrely specific and/or inane topics that mysteries targeted towards women seem to rotate through; name any kind of catnip for housewives, and you’re likely to find an author struggling to find a way to shoehorn it into a escapist adventure with a female protagonist who just can’t help but keep stumbling over dead bodies of minor characters. There are cat mysteries, chocolate mysteries, coffee mysteries (and if you don't utter a horrified groan at the title of Roast Mortem, you have no soul), etc.; as of yet I’m unaware of any mysteries that revolve around hunky, shirtless firemen or murderous hijinks on the set of Ellen, but give it time.

One of the more successful and long-running lady-targeted mystery series is Janet Evanovich’s numbered series of dramas starring Stephanie Plum (now up to the rarefied “I give up trying to come up with numerical puns and will simply settle for alliteration” air of Explosive Eighteen). While they don’t contain gimmicks, per se, aside from the title scheme, the screen adaptation of One For The Money would seem to indicate that they firmly slots themselves into that category which can very crudely be described as “housewife porn,” what with a young, attractive, childless divorcée finding herself free to pursue an exciting career as a bounty hunter while negotiating the steamy waters of potential romance with not one, but two extremely attractive men of almost prototypical bad-boyishness. (A typical description of one of the men in the books: “over six feet of gorgeous, hard-muscled, slightly tanned male.” I’ll be in my bunk.)

So far, so decent, in other words; the resultant film never really extends too far from that baseline, for better or worse. As Plum, Katherine Heigl at least manages to affect a rough New Jersey accent, as does the rest of her extended family, which apparently consists of almost every resident of Trenton; after a string of financial disappointments, she warily takes on a few jobs for her bail bondsman cousin, one of which happens to be tracking down Joe Morelli (Terra Nova’s Jason O’Mara), a cop who apparently murdered a heroin dealer in cold blood. And who also happens to be the guy who took her virginity and never called her again, giving Plum all of the impetus she really needs to track him down, even if she wasn’t going to get paid $50,000 for the job.

Of course, the fact that Plum has never done any kind of investigation work nor fired a gun before is a bit of a complicating factor, a factor for which Ranger (Rescue Me’s dreamy Daniel Sunjata) is inserted into the story to smooth other. Ranger has no particular bearing on the film’s over-arching plot; he’s simply intended to be the kind of mentor character that shows up with a nugget of advice (on shooting, lockpicking, being dreamy, car theft, etc.) whenever Plum finds herself in a tough spot. He is effectively Plum’s skeleton key, getting her through whatever locked doors she might come across, both figuratively and literally.

Did I mention he’s also dreamy? As a bit of light escapism, One For The Money assures that its target audience will at least be entertained by its stars’ appearances: despite their mutual antagonism, Plum and Morelli manage to stumble into a number of situations that require them them to each take their shirts off (with Morelli apparently still managing to hit the gym daily despite being a wanted felon, and Plum topping out at 125 pounds despite eating nothing but cheesepuffs and Hostess snack cakes), and Ranger consistently managing to show off his guns via a series of progressively-tighter shirts. There is the usual racket of almost-kisses and flirty behavior between Plum and the men in her life, and while One For The Money might not match the simmering sexual tension of, say, your Top Guns, it still manages to claim the breezily inoffensive chemistry that one would expect from a film based on a romance mystery novel (and comes across far better in that regard than Heigl’s dire 2011 films, Killers and Life As We Know It).

No one’s going to confuse this for high art, but if you’re in the mood for an afternoon of generally consistent popcorn fare with a few good punchlines and attractive actors playing off of each other with a modicum of chemistry, you’ll get what you came for; certainly the older audience that I happened to watch it with responded well enough to it. It doesn’t overwhelm with action setpieces (its on-screen bodycount is all of one or two people), and, yes, its villain does stupidly get caught monologuing at the climax, when he could’ve simply shot everyone and be done with it. It’s not an ambitious film, in either the writing or the direction, but its modesty ends up working in its favor. It doesn't aim high, but it at least hits the targets at which it aims, and winds up being consistently amusing and watchable.

One For The Money is that rare Hollywood film that was both written and directed by women, and it doesn’t really attempt to hide its efforts to appeal to its target audience. Even so, it’s an affable enough affair that it shouldn’t cause the boyfriends in the audience to feel that they’ve received too much of a raw deal as they file out of a theater; director Julie Anne Robinson goes to extremes to ensure that the proceedings are always light and innocuous. One For The Money may not have a lot of meat on its bones, but what is there at least tastes decent enough.