Eenie Meanie

This comedy crime thriller was released with little fanfare, but it’s a hidden gem.  The underrated Samara Weaving excels as a retired getaway driver drawn back into the life she’s tried to leave behind, while first-time writer/director Shawn Simmons expertly balances the action scenes, dark comedy and character moments.

Premise:  Edie “Eenie” Meanie (Samara Weaving) fell into a life of crime as a getaway driver in her youth, before managing to turn her life around.  But her attempts to lead a normal life and put herself through community college are derailed when her on-again-off-again petty criminal boyfriend John (Karl Glusman) crosses local crime boss Nico (Andy Garcia).

Review:

The curse of streaming is that some great movies are released with little-to-no fanfare, and before you know it, they’re lost in the morass of viewing options.  This is precisely what happened to Eenie Meanie, which was released on Hulu/Disney+ over the summer, but which most people probably haven’t even heard of.  Which is a shame, because Eenie Meanie is a lot of fun, and an impressive debut from first-time writer/director Shawn Simmons.

Stylistically, the film is a cross-between a throwback to 70s crime thrillers (even the movie’s poster is intentionally grainy, with fake “folds” in the “paper”, to echo the 70s tone), and the kinetic, comedic pace and heist structure of something like Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver.  Shawn Simmons does a great job of keeping all of these disparate elements coherent, but it’s Samara Weaving’s central performance that makes this film work as well as it does.

“…it barely lets up the pace during its tight runtime…”

Samara Weaving is, in my opinion, criminally underrated as an actress, and since her breakthrough role in 2019’s Ready or Not (the sequel to which is due out next year), she’s taken on some really interesting roles in films like the bizarre Guns Akimbo and the cult sequel Bill & Ted Face The Music, but she’s not broken out into the mainstream like I might have expected her to.  It may be that she simply has no interest in playing “mainstream” roles, but on paper Eenie Meanie should have had mainstream appeal – but it’s flown so far under the radar, hardly anyone’s seen it.

Eenie Meanie is the movie equivalent of a joyride, and it barely lets up the pace during its tight 96 minutes runtime.  It’s the kind of film that throws an endless stream of obstacles and unexpected developments into the protagonist’s path, so that from one minute to the next you’re never quite sure where the movie is going.  So it’s best to just sit back and enjoy the ride…

“...Edie & John’s relationship feels genuine & messy…”

The cause of the mess that Edie finds herself in is John (Karl Glusman), her petty criminal ex-boyfriend who drags Edie back into the criminal underworld that she’d escaped from.  John and Edie have a beautifully complex relationship which Samara Weaving and Karl Glusman bring to life convincingly.  I don’t want to give too much away about their backstories, but their relationship feels genuine and messy in the way that some real-life relationships are – Edie knows that John is bad news, but their shared history means that severing all ties to him is easier said than done.

The film primarily focuses on Edie and John, but it was great to see Andy Garcia bring unexpected depth to his crime boss character Nico, while Steve Zahn, Jermaine Fowler, Marshawn Lynch and Randall Park fill out the cast of eccentric supporting characters.  Meanwhile, for what was presumably a (relatively) low budget debut film, Shawn Simmons delivers some impressive and refreshingly practical action and driving sequences.

“…a hidden gem of a movie that’s just waiting to be discovered…”

Ultimately, the film may be a little rough around the edges in places, and although I admire the ambition of some of its third act plot developments and tonal shifts, they may not entirely work for everyone.  That said, having had some time to reflect on the movie, I think that the unexpected third act developments might be what sets this film apart from others in the genre.  Either way, you should definitely give Eenie Meanie a try and find out for yourself, because this is a hidden gem of a movie that’s just waiting to be discovered online.