30 Minutes or Less

One thing I thought was original and fun about this buddy flic (or that dreaded word, "bromance") was that we get to explore two different pairs of buddies. The good guys have a relationship that goes back to childhood, but so, it appears, do the bad guys. And, in fact, the relationship between Dwayne and Travis (the villains of this silly but fun story) actually grows through the course of the film. So now we have not only interesting bad guys who are actual human beings but also get to have a friend that's more than a sidekick to, you know, kick around. Travis, the less confidant but ultimately more sane of the two, actually develops enough to stick up for himself and to stop Dwayne from doing something really bad.

What was fun about watching Nick (Jesse Eisenberg) and Chet (Aziz Ansari) together was their strong chemistry as friends. You can believe that these guys actually care about each other. You can also understand why Chet would be fed up with the listless Nick (a much darker, more depressive character than the sunny one played by Eisenberg in Zombieland).

Anyway, the two pairs of buddies get caught up in bad plans and much posturing and all hell breaks loose, only to be very neatly wrapped up with an acute moral sense. The whole tone of the movie captures the vulnerability and testosterone of male adolescence very well, even though the characters are older than that. Like the likable losers of Step-Brothers these four guys have somehow managed to squeak through their thirties without much being demanded of them. However, when the rubber meets the road, they are loyal to their friends. Men around the world who have much more complicated lives will breath a sigh of relief.