The film adaptation of Be Cool began production in 2004. It was directed by F. Gary Gray and produced by DeVito, Michael Shamberg, and Stacey Sher. The film was released on March 4, 2005, receiving negative reviews and grossing $95 million against a budget of $53–75 million.
Plot
Ernesto "Chili" Palmer, restless and disenchanted with filmmaking, enters the music industry after witnessing the Ukrainian mob publicly whack his friend Tommy Athens, owner of a small, independent record label. Chili offers to help Tommy's widow, Edie Athens, manage the failing business, which owes $300,000 to hip-hop producer Sin LaSalle.
Chili is impressed by small-time club singer Linda Moon and helps free her from contractual obligations to crooked producers Nick Carr and Raji, who has a gaySamoan bodyguard named Elliot, an aspiring actor and the butt of Carr and Raji's homophobic jokes. Carr and Raji pay hitman Joe "Loop" Lupino to kill Chili before he can save Edie's company by arranging a live performance for Linda accompanied by Steven Tyler and Aerosmith.
Lasalle demands payment of the $300,000 but agrees to give Chili a few days to get the money plus the vig. When the Ukrainians attempt to kill Chili, Joe Loop mistakenly kills mob enforcer Ivan Argianiyev. Carr is furious about the mistake and demands that Raji talks to Loop at once. Raji then beats Loop to death with a metal baseball bat after Loop "disrespects" him.
Carr then tries to trick Chili by handing him a pawn ticket, claiming that the only copy of Linda's contract is at a pawn shop owned by the Ukrainians ("I don't know how they do it in the Ukraine" - said Cedric the Entertainer at 1:28:41 in the movie, for example). Chili, being much smarter than Carr anticipated, has Edie tip off the FBI and starts a fight to get the shop raided. Raji and Elliot then set up LaSalle by making him believe that Carr tricked Chili into giving him the $300,000 to get Linda's contract. LaSalle and his bodyguards, rap group DubMD, confront Carr in his office, as does the Ukrainian boss, Bulkin, and his men. Insulted by Bulkin's racist remarks, LaSalle personally murders him on impulse.
Chili squeezes in a dance scene with Edie, celebrating as Linda Moon gets to make her appearance and becomes an instant success. He also manages to placate LaSalle by agreeing that he will produce Linda's next album and get a share of the profits.
Carr is enraged upon hearing of the deal, so he and Raji order Elliot to kill Chili. By assuring Elliot that he can help his acting career, Chili befriends him. After learning that Chili had gotten him an audition for a Nicole Kidman film, Elliot turns on Raji, who had erased the message on his answering machine. For all his smooth talking and flamboyant wardrobe, Raji is burned to death on camera by a fireworks explosion. Carr is arrested on murder charges when Chili makes sure he is caught with the bat used to kill Joe Loop, via another pawn ticket.
At the MTV Video Music Awards, Linda wins the awards for best new artist and video of the year. During her acceptance speech, she thanks Edie, Sin and Chili. Edie and Chili leave the award ceremony. As Chili drives off, he passes a billboard revealing that Elliot is the co-star of a new movie with Kidman.
On a production budget of $53–75 million, Be Cool grossed $56 million in North America and $39.2 million internationally, totaling up to $95.2 million worldwide.[2][3]
Critical reception
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 30% based on 171 reviews, with an average rating of 4.6/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Be Cool is tepid, square, and lukewarm; as a parody of the music business, it has two left feet."[4] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 37 out of 100, based on 38 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".[5] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale.[6]
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called it "A classic species of bore: a self-referential movie with no self to refer to. One character after another, one scene after another, one cute line of dialogue after another, refers to another movie, a similar character, a contrasting image, or whatever."[7]
Halliwell called it "a palpable miss, a movie so lazy and laid back that it falls over; there are none of those insights ... that made Get Shorty so enjoyable".[8]
In an August 2015 interview with Deadline, director F. Gary Gray discussed the failure of the film, stating: "With Be Cool, I made some assumptions in thinking that movie was going to work. I'd just made a successful PG-13 movie [The Italian Job], and when I walked into Be Cool, it was rated R and then at the last minute in preproduction I was told, 'Well, you have to make this PG-13.' I should have walked off the film. This was a movie about shylocks and gangsta rappers and if you can't make that world edgy, you probably shouldn't do it. I walked in thinking I was going to make one movie and then it changed. Maybe it was arrogant of me to think because I had success in this realm of PG-13 I could make that work."[9]
