Steve Coogan stars as Ray Elliott, a smart guy with an affinity for fabrication who parlays his talents into a highly successful business. He provides air-tight alibis for cheating spouses. And business is good for him. So good that he really needs some additional help on the team. Enter Lola (Romijn), herself an accomplished businesswoman who doesn’t quite realize just what type of job she’s interviewing for. Fortunately for Ray, she’s as good as he is and slides easily into the job.
One of Ray’s best clients is a man by the name of Robert Hatch (Brolin), who just can’t seem to keep his pants on. His son, soon to be married Wendell (Marsden), is a chip off the old, horny block. As a pre-wedding surprise, Wendell decides to have Ray arrange a getaway with his squeeze of the moment, Heather (King), who also happens to be the daughter of some really wealthy folks, the girlfriend of a crazy Mexican and a total wild child in the bed. A little rough sex gets out of hand and Heather winds up dead. It’s up to Ray to clean up this mess since, you guessed it, he signed Hatch into the hotel with his name to protect his identity. Madness ensues.
All the while that this story is unfolding, you have several others in play as well. There’s Ray’s former business partner who he apparently wronged before opening his own business and this guy is out to get him. Then you’ve got “The Mormon” (Sam Elliott), a hitman possibly hired to kill Ray. One of his sex-crazy wives is Selma Blair who is out to get into Ray’s pants. And so on and so on. Throughout the movie, so much is going on and there are so many characters, that it is hard to keep them all straight in your head and I found myself (along with J.R. Nip and Geck0) confused throughout most of the movie. In a way, Lies and Alibis reminded me of Snatch, a frenetic caper movie with lots going on. You know that everything is going to converge at the end, but it’s just not clear how. Except that in Snatch, this style was done way better. However, by the time you get to the end of the flick, and the aforementioned convergence occurs, it’s one of those “wow” moments. The end was great, wrapped everything up nicely and left me pleasantly surprised.
While this is probably not one you’ll want to watch over and over (although you probably should to really understand what is happening), it’s worth a rental. It’s chock full of great character actors and its an amusing yarn with a really good ending. There are, however, no features to speak of other than a few previews.
