Arizona

This film noir-style thriller starts promisingly, then wilts badly. Early on, Arizona boasts a crisp script with characters who are revealed through action (e.g., Cassie keeps her head in an unexpected crisis, which foreshadows her later actions) and telling details (workers paint dead lawns green to keep property values up). DeWitt's Cassie is appealing: Despite her financially desperate situation, she keeps her values and wits about her. McBride's Sonny is another take on the actor's stock-in-trade talkative loose-cannon types, here darker than in previous versions. And the movie's scenario -- the recent housing crisis and the devastation it created -- is interesting. That devastation is represented by newly built and already empty McMansions and the desperation bubbling beneath the characters' surfaces (which may have driven one of them mad).

But about halfway through, the twists get tired, the ideas seem to run dry, and aspirations of black comedy evaporate. What started as something offbeat and clever devolves into another women-in-peril flick in which the characters keep finding golden opportunities to end the chase but choose to run instead. Too many times, you'll find yourself asking, "Well, you have a phone; why not call the police?" Sonny's walk on the wild side -- which becomes a swan dive into hell -- comes from nowhere. And it's worth asking why so many of the movie's female characters are portrayed as bickering shrews when no male ones are, and why so many female characters are knocked out when none of the male ones are. There's also some gratuitous imperiled-woman-in-a-bra foolishness, which might have read as a parody in another movie. Still, DeWitt shines in the lead role. It's unlikely that many will clamor for a sequel to this ultimately ordinary thriller, but it would almost be worth it to spend more time with the actress's all-business-in-the-clutch Cassie.