Feeling Minnesota -

Feeling Minnesota is a rather plain wanna-be-quirky drama. Sam Clayton (Vincent D’Onofrio) is the accountant of the local mob boss, Red (Delroy Lindo). When he reveals to Red that a woman named Freddie (Cameron Diaz) has stolen $10,000, Red forces Freddie to marry Sam, as Sam’s reward and Freddie’s punishment. However, on the day of the wedding, Sam’s ne’er-do-well brother Jjaks (Keanu Reeves) wanders back into town. Freddie and Jjaks are instantly smitten with one another, and in a few days, Jjaks steals a car, and he and Freddie set out for Las Vegas. Unfortunately, unforseen circumstances keep the couple in Minnesota, where Sam searches for them with bloodshed on his mind. For all their violence and bluster, the dysfunctional characters that make up this story turn out to be rather boring. Partly that’s due to a second-rate group of performances from nearly all involved. But a lot of blame must be given to the hole-riddled script. The whole thing makes about as much sense as Sam and Jjaks’ childhood game in which the winner of a 2-out-of-3 rock-paper-scissors game gets to smash the hand of the loser…and causes about as much pain for the audience. Director Steven Baigleman may have been aiming for the typical independent-film quirkiness that is a dime-a-dozen these days, but what he delivers is muddled and uninteresting.