What did you think of "Where the Money Is"?   Good 59% 79   Bad 15% 20   Somewhere in between 12% 16   Haven't seen it 14% 19 Total Votes   134

Grade: B

Verdict: A wry, laid-back little caper comedy, brushed with stardust.

Details: Starring Paul Newman, Linda Fiorentino and Dermot Mulroney. Directed by Marek Kanievska. Rated PG-13 for sexual content. 1 hour, 30 minutes.

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Review: About all anybody really needs to know about "Where the Money Is" is that it co-stars Paul Newman and Linda Fiorentino. That it's also a darned clever little caper flick is just a bonus.

Fiorentino, whose smoky voice and sultry looks have pretty much defined the smart-girl seductress type, plays nurse Carol Ann McKay. Unhappily married to her boorish high school sweetheart (Dermot Mulroney), she spends most of her time wondering how her life went wrong and ministering to nice little old ladies in a nursing home.

Then one day a prison van unloads Henry Manning (Newman), a famous bank robber who has suffered a stroke and is now nearly catatonic.

Or is he? Mysterious things happen when Henry's around. Such as a lamp shattering so that the noise brings the nurses running in time to rescue another resident from choking to death. Besides, if you've managed to get Paul Newman in your movie, are you really going to let him sit around like a vegetable for the entire picture?

Once Carol Ann unmasks Henry — her methods range from sexual enticement to attempted murder — she tries to talk him into one last heist. He initially resists working with an amateur — "Hey, I'm playing brain-damaged, not brain-dead." But she can be very persistent, and he'd like a little something socked away for his ultimate prison break.

"Money" has some major credibility gaps (most of which are smoothed over by the stars' charm) and an overall sense of being a minor-league movie. Director Marek Kanievska's best-known credit is the 1987 flop "Less Than Zero," based on a novel by Bret Easton Ellis, a coincidence given that "American Psycho," based on another Ellis novel, is also opening at the same time.

But the movie as a whole is wonderfully laid-back and pleasant to be around — the kind of throwaway that surprisingly engages you. The chemistry between Newman and Fiorentino is delicious, full of self-assured playfulness. Mulroney makes an obliging third wheel. And some of the lines are just plain funny. Unconvinced that Newman is faking it, Mulroney sneers, "This coleslaw has more going on than he does."

Finally, the film benefits from the long golden shadow cast by Newman's long golden career (you may remember that his character in "The Sting" was also named Henry). When he walks across the screen, we don't just see Paul Newman; we see Cool Hand Luke and the Hustler and dozens more. And when he and Carol Ann are trapped by the cops, he could almost be Butch Cassidy talking to Robert Redford's Sundance Kid when he says, "I don't know about glory, but we're going down in a blaze of something."

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Cox News Service

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