Susan Granger’s review of “GUN SHY” (Hollywood Pictures)
It’s got Sandra Bullock and Liam Neeson but something went terribly wrong with the incomprehensible script and lame direction of this silly mob comedy. Neeson plays a legendary undercover DEA agent who suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome after a failed sting operation. That’s why he seeks psychiatric help and winds up in group therapy and takes up with a spunky nurse, Sandra Bullock, who gives him an enema. Meanwhile, the nasty DEA chief (Mitch Pileggi of TV’s X-Files) assigns him to complete one final covert operation wherein he must escape the wrath of a hot-tempered, trigger-happy Mafia leader – known as “the Jeffrey Dahmer of hitmen”- played by Oliver Platt, and his vulgar, no-nonsense wife, Mary McCormack, who are involved with Colombian drug dealers in a complex money-laundering scheme. Sound like Analyze This? Sound like The Sopranos? The producers should be that lucky! Just because TV writer/director Eric Blakeney worked on Moonlighting, Wiseguy, and Max Headroom does not mean he can pull off this kind of unconventional feature film, particularly when he presents a colonic irrigation as a romantic encounter and relies on feeble poop jokes for laughs. Remember Grosse Pointe Blank? It explored much the same ironic territory – far better. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, Gun Shy misses the target with a fumbling 4. Few laughs, little suspense and several talented actors who surely could have found a better picture.
