Bait

Year of release : 2000

Run time : 1h59m

Genre : Action / Thriller / Heist

Cast : Jamie Foxx, David Morse, Jamie Kennedy, Mike Epps

Director : Antoine Fuqua

Two thieves are robbing the Federal Gold Reserve, from Manhattan, New York. One of them has heart problems and almost dies while trying to take his heart pill.

At the same time, in a different part of the city, Alvin brings his brother to a restaurant to rob it, as he wants to sell prawns. His brother bails on him.

On the other side of the city, the robber with heart problems leaves the other one behind, as he brought a gun to the heist, and k1lled the guards. Unluckily for him, the one with the gun chases him, and being winter, his truck doesn’t work properly, and almost drives into another truck.

When the other driver stops, the one with the gun sho0ts him, while his partner in crime gets away.

His partner in crime still ends up in jail (as they find his print from when he dropped his pills), and so does Alvin.

The chief investigator of the US Treasury Department is questioning the thief who ran away with the money seeing the other one k1lled the officers, and the man who was sick the whole day tells him he’s gonna tell him everything as long as he brings him a doctor. The investigator thinks he’s bluffing, and the man dies in front of him.

Alvin had the misfortune of sharing a cell with the man, so they question him too, and he tells them the man told him to tell his wife to go to the Zoo, as “there’s no place like home”.

Going to the Zoo, the police don’t find anything.

A year and a half later, the chief investigator decides to use Alvin as bait, so they use someone to hit him in the face with a brick, so they’ll have surgery on him to insert a tracking device which also records everything he says!

They release him under the false pretenses that the cops who arrested him were corrupt.

Once out, Alvin goes to see his girlfriend who didn’t visit him in jail, and finds out he has a son. She wants nothing to do with him as long as he’s not getting a decent job, thing he finds hard to do, as no one wants to hire a former convict, and his brother keeps on putting him in dangerous situations.

So, the chief investigator keeps on sending him money to keep him off the streets (with letters of apologies from the government for wrongful imprisonment due to the “corrupt cop”), until the criminal they’re after takes the bait and they catch him.

Soon, the secluded criminal, the chief investigator likens to a wolf in behavior, notices Alvin (due to the bait the investigators placed online ) and starts going after him.

While the criminal takes the bait, Alvin notices the investigators he met run around the place, and realizes they set him up and follow him. So does the criminal who is after him.

This used to be one of my favorite movies, I watched it many times, and used to make me laugh so hard, but last night not so much.

The movie is good, it’s action packed, and it’s funny, as Alvin always makes funny remarks. He is also always chased by two guys who think that he and his brother called the police on them, because they didn’t show up to one of their meetings when the cops did. So, whenever these two want to harm him, someone shows up and beats them up or end up in some accident, to the point they end up considering him the devil!

The villain was very cool, calm and collected, with a smooth, soothing voice.

The acting was good.

Kirk Acevedo known from Fringe, has a small role in the movie.

The soundtrack was so and so, I liked it at times, other times, like with the credits intro, I didn’t.

Bait has a Rotten Tomatoes rating score of 26 with the critics, and 41 with the audience, while on Metacritic it sits at 39 %. Cinema Score audiences graded the movie an A-!

The movie was a box office bomb, grossing only 15 million dollars against a budget of 51 million dollars!

Rating : Worth a watch !