One Night at McCool’s

An alluring woman meets three men and strings them along, involving them in murder, fraud and robbery. The story is told from the three men’s perspectives, the details changing slightly each time. The events spawn from one night in a bar, McCool’s, where two of the men meet the woman.

This is a strange film in many ways, sort of a neo-noir comedy crossed with one of those multi-threaded plots that rarely work that well. To this one’s credit, we don’t often re-wind to see events in a different perspective, the amount of overlapping is just enough to make the concept worth trying, yet not so much we get bored of the idea.

Overall though One Night at McCool’s gets too wound up flipping between stories. There’s no focus to any of it, and the story just never really gets going. The performances were a little off too on a couple of fronts; Liv Tyler is alluring enough to make it work, and John Goodman is a talented guy, but Matt Dillon and Paul Reiser just don’t bring much to the table.

This is a run of the mill comedy destined to be forgotten.