All About the Benjamins (2002)

Review by All Movie Guide
With its engaging central duo caught in an underworld of bounty hunters and diamond thieves, All About the Benjamins at best resembles a good modern blaxploitation flick -- the kind that brings guilty pleasure, not discomfort. At its worst, though, it's a ludicrous, outsized caper story revolving around two different booties of 20-plus million dollars. Forget about Benjamin Franklin, who's on the thousand? Also forget about the Puff Daddy song of the same name, and the fact that the title sounds so 1998; Benjamins looks like a 2002 movie, especially during some crackling action sequences that have the kinetic energy and bouncy camera of Ridley Scott's later work. That's a pretty high compliment to pay video director Kevin Bray, but he only reaches that level in flashes. The rest of the time he's forgetting that it should all make narrative sense, that two thugs can't be tossed off the side of the boat and then disappear from the story, that a guy with a missile launcher can't pop up and vanish without explanation. Still, the inclination is to forgive Benjamins some of these faults, because Ice Cube and Mike Epps deliver the goods more often than not, achieving mindless popcorn entertainment with crossover potential. Cube is a known commodity by this point, but Epps gets his best showcase to prove he can sling high-speed, streetwise bull that's different enough from his contemporaries to be distinctive. Even when the plot points are patently fake, these two manage to keep it real. ~ Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide