Latex Movie Review - Rip it Off

In 1980 there was this cute heist movie called How to Beat the High Co$t of Living that featured Jane Curtin, Susan Saint James and Jessica Lange as three friends who plot to steal the prize money from a mall contest while the contest is in progress. It was the first movie I ever saw with women attempting a heist, and every time I saw a female heist movie since I always go back to this film as a comparison. ( one of the latest being Mad Money with Katie Holmes, Diane Keaton and Queen Latifah ) For some reason whenever an all woman cast is involved in a heist it always ends up as if it was an episode of I Love Lucy with the women running around making mistakes left and right and overreacting to everything. The movie Beyond City Limits ( which is released in this hemisphere under the less appealing title Rip It Off ) follows the same formula, but with a twist. People get killed.

I assume that the producer of this movie had intended it to be a comedy. I found nothing in it funny, and it seems like director Gigi Gaston got carried away making this a dark picture. Aside from characters getting shot to death there are painful relapses into drug addiction, men throwing their wives/girlfriends out in the street to fend for themselves after arguments and the occasional female character being beaten. The film opens with Misha ( Natassja Kinski ) and Lexi ( Alyson Hannigan ), two friends and possible lesbian lovers who are staying with two Russian hoods who are also possibly homosexual lovers ( Brian McCardie and Alexis Denisof ). The hoods have been approached by a casino security guard named Troy ( Steve Harris ) who is also an old friend of Misha. Troy tells them that the casino is about to be shut down by it's new owners and wants them to rob the vault of it's cash. Troy will help by opening the odd security door. Not too soon later the hoods throw Misha and Lexi out of their apartment, accusing them of being lesbians. The two women hook up with another old friend of Misha's named Helena ( Jenniffer Esposito ) who's marriage with her cop husband Jack ( Todd Field ) is falling apart. Helena tells Misha and Lexi that their boyfriends threw them out because they did not want to cut them in on the heist money. To get back at them Helena agrees to tell her husband Jack about the planned heist, and perhaps allowing her husband to nab the thugs and prevent the heist will get him that long overdue promotion and save their marriage. Instead Jack and his partner force the hoods to cut them in 60-40. When Helena finds out that Jack is going to become part of the heist she demands her own cut, and is immediately thrown out of their apartment along with her dog. Now that all three women are homeless they decide to get some revenge by tricking the Russian hoods into shooting each other, then pulling off the heist themselves, framing Jack and his partner in the process.

I will not give away any more of the plot, but needless to say characters are, OOPS, killed during the heist. And there is an unnecessary tragic ending that will probably have you pissed off at the people who made this movie. As a comedy this movie fails and as a heist film it fails. I also suspect miscasting on the part of the three principal women. Their characters first names are Russian, but none speak in Russian accents. Had the women been Russian then it would have explained much of the plot. Much of the movie is a mess, although it does have a few good moments which the director never bothers to capitalize on. At least it is missing one cliche that you usually find in comedy heist movies. The women do not suddenly lose the money at the movie's end. They come close to having it happen but manage to turn the situation around. At least the film has that going for it.

THE SCENE:
This is the movie for all you Sophie B Hawkins fans out there who saw great potential in her censored video Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover where she crawled around on all fours wearing nothing but diapers and wraps, only to watch her clean up her sexy act for her adult contemporary phase with the safe As I Lay Me Down. The news here was Sophie wearing a latex catsuit. Just about every second of her wearing it has ended up on Youtube. Sophie plays a character named Lucy "The Ice Queen", a skateboarding waitress in a trendy dive. She first shows up at 25 minutes, then again in the catsuit at 37 minutes where she is singing a song while doing a pole dance. ( Sorry, the director of this film only gives Sophie a few seconds during this scene, so short that it is practically impossible to tell which of her songs she is singing. ) The catsuit turns up one last time at 38 minutes. In between is a brief scene with Lucy in an average jogging outfit as Helena talks her into seducing her husband Jack. The only other scene with Lucy has her and Troy in her apartment. Lucy is talking Jack into sniffing coke while Helena stands outside the window snapping incriminating pictures. ( The pictures never come into play. Another sloppy red herring in the film's plot. ) Lucy wears a grey t-shirt and leather pants, and that scene can be found at 39 minutes. In total Sophie's contribution to the movie is limited to this 14 minute span including plenty of cut aways to other characters. There is not much more to recommend about the rest of the movie fashion-wise. At 11 minutes Natassja wears a red leather coat while Allyson wears a yellow coat that is partially leather. Allison wears an oversize black leather coat at 22 minutes, 32 minutes and again at 52 minutes. And during the heist Jennifer and Natassja both wear leather jackets while Allyson wears one that looks like Vinyl. None of this is worth fast forwarding to but I thought I would mention it anyway. It should also be noted that the Canadian DVD for this movie features Jennifer Esposito on the box wearing a strange leather outfit with an unusually high and thick collar. She wears no such outfit in the movie.