The Crew is a 2000 film, directed by Michael Dinner and starring Burt Reynolds, Seymour Cassel, Richard Dreyfuss, Dan Hedaya and Jennifer Tilly. Barry Sonnenfeld was one of the film's producers. It has been rated PG-13.
Plot
It involves four retired mobsters (Wiseguys) who plan one last crime to save their apartment at retirement home whose renters are becoming younger as the former residents die off to old age. The four steal a corpse from the mortuary where one works, and decide to shoot it in the head to stage a murder. Unbeknown to them, the body belonged to the head of a drug smuggling ring; his father had dementia and escaped his mental facility and died soon after escaping from the hospital. As a result of the 'murder', many renters leave and the four men are given money by the complex to keep living there. Much of this money was spent on Rolex's, cars and women, which ends up in the revelation to an outsider that the four men are the ones who staged the murder.
To keep the 'murder' under wraps, the four agree to kill a woman's stepmother, but in the attempt manage to burn down the house of the drug-smuggler. Under the belief that someone is trying to usurp him from power, the drug lord offers up $100,000 to anyone who brings the head of the man responsible. This leads to a confrontation at the apartment, leading to the capture of a female police officer, her partner, the woman (who contacted the men to kill her stepmother), the stepmother and one of the Wiseguys. One of the Wiseguys had managed to escape this conflict, and led the other two into tracking down the men who kidnapped their friend.
After scoping out the area, the three remaining Wiseguys contact all the living Wiseguys they knew while in their 30's and lay siege against the drug lord. The Wiseguys end up taking over the ship where their friends are being held and turning them over to the police, along with the shipment of drugs. A truckload of Cuban cigars was taken by the men and used to make their apartment complex into a retirement home for old Wiseguys who were "down on their luck".
A sub-plot of the movie was one of the Wiseguys trying to find his daughter whom his wife took away while he was serving time in his 30's. He and his daughter meet several times in the movie, but he does not reveal who he is to her until he rescues her from the drug lord towards the end of the movie, and they don't speak until after the wedding of a Wiseguy and the stepmother.
Reaction
The Crew received mixed to negative reviews upon release, and was mostly noted for its similarities to Space Cowboys, which also involved four retirees who return for one last job (in that case, to go back into space). It was a box office flop, grossing only US$13 million off an estimated $23 million budget.
External links