Rancid Aluminum Movie Review

I wish I could tell you what Rancid Aluminum was supposed to mean. I wish I could tell you what this film was about at all.

Here's what I do know: Rhys Ifans and Joseph Fiennes play partners in a business somewhere in Britain. They're out of cash, so they decide to borrow money from a Russian mafioso of sorts. Meanwhile, Ifans and his girlfriend (Sadie Frost) decide they want to have babies... but they can't get pregnant. But Ifans eye is wandering... to his secretary and to Tara Fitzgerald's Russian mafia princess. For some reason, everyone wants this guy! And if they don't want him, they want him dead.

The confusing series of events (which naturally involve a whole lot of guns and doublecrosses) are only half the problem; the thick accents -- Brit and Russkie -- mask any semblance of understandability in the storyline. A lot of it is dubbed -- notably Fitzgerald's inexplicable casting as the icy Russian babe, playing unsuccessfully against type -- and that doesn't help the coherence of the film.

Aside from a few good lines (the ones I could hear, anyway) about the infantilism of Westerners and a couple of bizarre scenes that can only come courtesy of the quirky Ifans, there's not a lot here to recommend.