When The Big Bounce begins, Native Hawaiians are protesting a real estate development that involves cutting down palm trees. Developer Ray Ritchie (played by Gary Sinise) is transforming land, possibly once occupied by a Native Hawaiian family, into a tourist resort on the North Shore of O`ahu, where we are occasionally treated to a view of surfing the big waves. In the opening scene, ex-con Jack Ryan (played by Owen Wilson) makes a hit with the Native Hawaiians by punching foreman Lou Harris (played by Vinnie Jones). Soon, we discover that Ryan runs small-time scams, including entering a beachhouse to steal wallets while tourists are on the oceanfront beach, but his dream of a much bigger con ("bounce," using the jargon of the 1960s) comes when he meets Nancy Hayes (played by Sara Foster), the mistress of the developer. Nancy dangles before him the lollipop that the developer keeps $200,000 in cash at his hunting lodge. Nancy then pretends to carry on a love affair with him, telling him that she is trying to avoid the wrath of the developer's wife (played by Bebe Neuwirth). Indeed, several scams are taking place simultaneously, even involving District Judge Walter Crewes (played by Morgan Freeman), miscast as a Native Hawaiian, who hires Ryan after the fistfight to do odd jobs at his bungalow hotel. However, the image presented of the Islands is that narcissistic whites in their twenties flee to Hawai`i to engage in hedonism, never run into the local population, and are mostly crooks. The image of the fiftieth state, in short, is dismissive, as if the Islands exist only as a playground for Mainland visitors. Directed by George Armitage, the plot is a remake of a 1969 film based on a novel written by Elmore Leonard about a resort in Michigan. Whereas the 1969 version takes place in Monterey, California, a Michigan setting might have encouraged the actors to take their roles more seriously; but the producers, evidently having an MTV audience in mind, decided to dump the boring project into cinemas in mid-January. MH
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