In a climate where every other weekend threatens to bury us under grainy, self-important crime dramas or slick, plasticine “thrillers,” Eenie Meanie breezed onto my screen with the confidence of a film that knows it’s here for a good time, not a long one—and the sense, at least in its opening stretches, that cinema can admit to a little pulp without losing its nerve. I wasn’t expecting much, but—bless this fractured genre landscape—I found myself having, yes, actual fun.
The director, Shawn Simmons, seems to understand what a contemporary caper needs: speed, excess, and a heroine with enough charisma to make even the most derivative engine feel freshly tuned. Samara Weaving, who has lately made a career of outrunning both literal gunfire and bad scripts, is our Edie (the “Eenie Meanie” of the arch title), an ex-getaway driver slogging through the banality of civilian life—and the gravitational tug of a deadbeat ex-boyfriend who possesses the self-destructive charm of a wet match.
If the premise sounds familiar, Simmons doesn’t apologize. He leans into every familiar curve: Edie roped back for one last job, a rogues’ gallery of oddball accomplices (Andy Garcia and Mike O’Malley outdoing each other in wisecracking menace), a job gone off the rails, breakneck car chases. The movie knows every note of Baby Driver’s playlist, and at times finds itself humming along. But the resemblance is superficial. Simmons’ film, while not as dazzling as Edgar Wright’s chrome-and-color ballet, prefers a looser, more freewheeling rhythm—its own trashy jazz riff, seasoned by sardonic humor and a lingering whiff of desperation.
The first act is a confection: rapid-fire gags, jittery introductions (Randall Park’s high-strung card player nearly runs away with the movie), and the kind of momentum that threatens to ricochet off the frame. For a gleeful forty-five minutes, the movie pulses with comic energy and a cheerfully shameless sense of style. You half-expect the plot to downshift into the familiar wear and tear of genre drudgery, and yet, for a while, Eenie Meanie keeps the ride exhilarating.
But, inevitably, the brakes kick in. Simmons, perhaps too eager to bestow his bunch of lovable nitwits with wound and soul, takes a left turn into drama: the relationship between Edie and her ex-John (Karl Glusman, channeling the cartoonish frustration of every man-child ever strapped into a doomed relationship). Here the film’s tone wobbles—what began as zany crime farce lurches toward earnestness, and the momentum stalls. Simmons wants the heist to matter, emotionally, but the screenplay can’t quite cash the check it writes. The playful chaos dissipates and sudden “meaning” lands with a thud. We’re meant to care, but the script hasn’t done the earning—leaving us wishing for another wild chase instead of one more bout of romantic self-destruction.
If the second act falters, the third is downright schizophrenic: earnestness giving way to violence and consequence, the color draining from the earlier pop. Simmons tries to weld the emotional arc to the caper mechanics, but by the time the credits roll you wish he’d simply let his misfits off the chain—let the momentum burn out in a riot of tire smoke and wisecracks. The film’s playfulness, so winning at the start, feels ground out by obligatory closure.
And yet, if the script judders between moods, the cast never stalls. Weaving, especially, is a perpetual delight: frazzled, tough, never too cool to be exasperated by the men around her or to drive a car through plate glass—all while suffused with a gamine hunger that makes even her blood-soaked set pieces feel strangely buoyant. At this point, she could read the owner’s manual in a getaway car and make it riveting. The supporting cast—Garcia, O’Malley, Park, and especially Marshawn Lynch’s hangdog tough—fill out the film’s world with just enough eccentricity to distract us from the more tired edges of the script.
I admit: I rooted for John to take his lumps, and nearly cheered at the prospect of his exit. The film tries to humanize his relationship with Edie, but there’s only so much a backstory can do to atone for that much dead weight. And even when Simmons plunges the film into darkness, abandoning caper for consequence, I found myself perversely appreciative—it’s not often a streaming crime comedy dares to pull the rug, even clumsily.
In the end, Eenie Meanie is a jalopy stitched together from spare parts—a streak of automotive larceny, a little Genie-in-the-bottle romance, a dash of pulp fatalism—but it cruises along with enough energy and wit to avoid stalling out entirely. The film never quite transcends its influences, and its tonal indecision ensures it won’t be remembered in the same breath as Baby Driver. But in a genre landscape littered with the junked hulks of straight-to-streaming mediocrities, Eenie Meanie is a surprisingly zippy ride. It’s not a great film, but it’s nowhere near a lemon—and sometimes, on a Friday night, that’s more than enough.
For those of us who watch Samara Weaving turn getaway stints and blood spatter into high art, Eenie Meanie is a quick trip worth taking, even if you won’t remember the route in the morning.
