Movie Movie Podcast

The Caan Men is a self-referential big hollywood action buddy film starring none other than James and Scott Caan playing themselves.

The film opens up at the premiere of the latest Oceans film, Oceans 15 (I’m calling 15, just incase 14 actually happens, and it probably will) at Mann’s Chinese Theater .  We see tons of celebrity cameo’s on the E! red carpet.  Ryan Seacrest is in the middle of interviewing George Clooney and Brad Pitt and they are hamming it up talking about how the film is a real piece of art or something, all the while, no one wants to interview Scott Caan.  For whatever reason, Pauly Shore has a cameo at this point telling Caan to get used to it.  Guys like them will never get the big interviews. Scott is obviously dejected, but he attempts to interrupt an interview with Seacrest and Matt Damon and it comes off as really pathetic.  He starts talking about how he’s on Hawaii 5-0 while drunk and everyone just sorta tries and play along, but at the same time get him off the camera.  He then stumbles on the red carpet spilling his drink on Matt Damon, who flips out on him.  Casey Affleck rescues Scott from his embarassment and tells Scott to just hang out in the bathroom and get himself together.  Scott obliges.  He goes to the bathroom to clean up, and starts drinking from his flask.

While Scott is in the bathroom, five masked men with AK-47’s inflitrate the red carpet and begin firing in the air.  They make it clear that this is a hostage situation.   One by one we see all the Oceans cast, other celebrities, and Ryan Seacrest get rounded up and brought into the theater.  One of the masked men with a voice distorter forces the camera crew to keep rolling to make his demands.  He wants 12 million dollars and a private jet delivered to a local airfield in 2 hours, or he’ll kill everyone.  Scott upon hearing the gunfire, hides in a bathroom stall with his feet up and calls, none other than his father James Caan.  James is at home watching footage of the hostage situation when Scott calls him frantically.  James tells him that if he’s calling, they must not have him, and if they don’t have him, that means he can help save everyone.  Scott tells him he doesn’t think he can do it, and James tells him he knows the ins and outs of the that theater, cause years ago the same thing happened to him during the filming of Honeymoon in Vegas.  A disgruntled former producer tried to kidnap Nicolas Cage, and Sarah Jessica Parker, but he stopped it (we see old footage of James stopping the kidnappers with a lot of kung-fu style moves).  James says “this time you can’t PLAY a tough guy, you gotta BE a tough guy.” We see that James Caan is putting on bulletproof vests and cocking a sawed off shotgun.

In movie convenience time, James goes into the sewer and crawls into a vent for the theater and finds the bathroom Scott is in.  While this is happening we see Pitt and Clooney trying to round people together to make an attack on one of the gunmen, while Seacrest and Damon caution them to stop.  The main gunman, still with distorted voice tells the crowd if anyone tries to escape or stop them, they will be killed.  Pitt and Clooney hold off on their plan, but we clearly see they are hero-types and Damon is just a big pussy.  Anyway, Scott and James are in the bathroom devising a plan of attack.  James tells Scott from what he saw on TV theres 5 men with guns, which means theres really 6.  Somewhere, probably in the projection room, theres a 6th armed man who is serving as their eyes.  They have to take the eyes out first before making a move on the other men.

We cut away to the police chief played by James Remar, is preparing to accomodate the list of demands from the gunmen, but the Warner Bros. studio head says he would rather send in his own private security to neutralize the men and save millions in the process.  His private security force is run by Jason Statham and Michael Clarke Duncan.  They infiltrate the theater, but within seconds, they are seen by the “eyes of the theater” and 3 gunmen go to their location, shooting and killing them.  The leader informs the world by camera, that because of their interference, he will have to kill one of the hostages.  George Clooney asks that he spare anyone else and take him.  The leader says that isn’t a bad idea, and shoots Clooney point blank in the head, killing him.  This is a big shock to everyone obviously.

Back at the Caan men, we see that James provided headsets so that when they split up they can stay in contact.  James is too old to be climbing ladders looking for men in the sky, so Scott decides to find the eyes, while James handles the groundwork.  Scott finds the projection room, and gets into a fight with the eyes. It goes on for a long time, but eventually Scott is able to snap the guys neck and kill him.  He then puts on the comm. device that the eyes was wearing and impersonates his voice so that no one knows he’s dead.  He’s ACTING! Then once he gives the ok to James we see him sneak up behind two men, stab one through the back and shoot the other with a silencer.  there are only 3 men left.

Scott comes down from the tower and when the leader notices that he hasn’t heard from two of his men yet, he sends the other two out separately to find them.  James and Scott have met up and at this point James tells Scott, he’s too old to run down the leader and that if Scott feeds the other men to him he can take them out, but Scott has to take out the leader himself (this doesn’t make sense but go with it). Scott agrees, and some heroic music plays and he creates a diversion that the guys hear.  When they finally go to the sound it’s James Caan shirtless and ready to kick ass.  He beats them both up, but this time a gun went off, so the leader knows someone else is inside.  He begins rounding the hostages up closer, and at this point Scott has taken off his vest and pretended to be a hostage like everyone else.  He’s sitting next to Pauly Shore and winks at him.  Scott eventually gets up and asks to speak to the leader.  The leader says he’ll only speak to A listers and turns around, and Scott says “that’s what I was counting on!” He charges at the leader and knocks him over, but the leader is like a supergood fighter and throws his guns away saying he doesn’t need them to take down a loser like Scott.  Scott says that it’s him and his father that took out all the other gunmen and the leader says it doesn’t matter because the police are on their way with his demands (this is all on tv btw).  Scott says that these people are innocent and don’t deserve this.  The leader begs to differ and in a dramatic fashion removes his mask to show that he’s none other than Vincent Cassel, villain of Oceans 12 (universally regarded as unneccessary).  He says that since that film, no one takes him seriously as an actor and none of the other stars would work with him blah blah blah, and Scott says it’s not a reason to take hostages, kill Clooney etc.  Vincent says, killing Clooney was just for fun.  Scott and Vincent engage in a super bloody knockout fight while everyone watches and James who we now see got shot by that one shot is listening along from one of the dead gunmens radios.

Eventually Scott gets the upper hand and kung-fun kicks Vincent through the movie screen. Scott goes up to him and says something lame before killing him like “I may be C-list, but you’re Dead-list” and shoots him in the head.  The hostages rejoice and we see that the TV stations and news outlets are praising James and Scott for saving the day.  The police chief tells them they did great work and he’d love to have them join the force etc.  James says he’s too old for that shit, but Scott might.  Now we see Ryan Seacrest only wants to the interview the Caan’s, and Scott and James both tell him to go fuck himself, and Pauly Shore comes up to the camera crew to try and tell his version of the attack, only with him in a more prominent role. Julia Roberts comes up to Scott and says that she’s always had eyes for him even though she was dating Clooney in the films, and Angelina Jolie tells him that she’s love to work with him on his next film.   Damon even comes up to him and quietly nods and shakes his head. The movie ends with a news report that Scott Caan is the biggest hero on the planet and we see video of Casey Affleck playing Scott Caan in the film based off of the hostage attack, that Scott directed.  We fade to credits showing Scott and James Caan on the cover of every magazine in the country.  This is a revisionist world like Bill and Ted only the Caan’s rule the world.