Underworld hipster Chili Palmer is back in the entertainment business in this sequel to the 1995 hit
Get Shorty, which like the first film is based on a novel by
Elmore Leonard. Gangster-turned-movie producer Chili (once again played by
John Travolta) has grown tired of the screen trade, especially after his latest project turned out to be a box-office flop. Chili is looking for new horizons and thinks he may have found his niche when his close friend Tommy Athens (
James Woods), a fellow mobster who runs an independent record label, is murdered by Russian gangsters. Chili takes over Athens' record company, Nothing to Lose Records, and begins courting Tommy's girlfriend, Edie (
Uma Thurman). Edie is an experienced hand in record production, and together she and Chili spot what would seem to be the ideal act for their label -- Linda Moon (
Christina Milian), a beautiful young woman with a powerhouse voice. Linda is stuck, however, in a going-nowhere R&B trio managed by the monumentally sleazy Raji (
Vince Vaughn). Chili isn't much concerned about Linda's contract with Raji, but Raji certainly is, and the manager soon takes out a contract on Chili with the same Russian hoods who killed Tommy. Soon Chili is facing all the action he can handle between the Russian gunmen, a music mogul named Nick Carr (
Harvey Keitel) who wants Chili to stay out of the business, and Sin LaSalle (
Cedric the Entertainer), a successful hip-hop producer who wants Chili to pay him the 300,000 dollars he is owed by Tommy. Be Cool also features appearances by
The Rock as a gay Samoan bodyguard, Andre Benjamin (aka
Andre 3000 from the hip-hop duo Outkast) as a rapper who isn't very good with a gun, and
Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler as himself. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide