"HEARTBREAKERS" A REVIEW

by Aldrin Naidu

Sigourney Weaver and Jennifer Love Hewitt play a crafty con team who will stop at nothing in getting their pot of gold from wealthy businessmen.

Breaking hearts along the way, they set up elaborate schemes to marry rich men, only to divorce them after finding them in compromising positions a day or two later.

The poster blurb for Heartbreakers warns "Caution: Dangerous Curves Ahead". It's quite an apt description of the mom and daughter team - both Max and Page are extremely sexy, manipulative in their own ways and keen to outdo each other.

The story kicks off with wedding celebrations between Max (Weaver) and Dean Cummano (Ray Liotta). He, in his eagerness to taste the wedding cookie, attempts to drag the non-blushing bride to the bedroom.

If only he can get her away from the fidgetty hands of the best man and that other guy she insists on dancing with...

The marriage doesn't last longer than a day thanks to the meddling of Cummano's horny secretary. And mom and daughter walk off into the sunset, $300 000 and a renovated Mercedes Benz richer.

But now Page, tiring of the lifestyle and of her mother's clutches, wants her share of the loot as well as her independence. However, the intrusion of a pesky revenue official is set to thwart such ambitions.

The con artists decide on a final hit: the multibillionaire, chain-smoking, ugly-toothed, perpetually coughing misogynist, William B Tensy (Gene Hackman) .

Though Max has mastered the art of pressing the right buttons, making the right moves and heading for just the right exit when all hell breaks loose, there seems no exit in one scene when the spotlight falls on her in a restaurant. She has to sing in Russian to Russian diners with a Russian band on stage. And it's the scene in which she plays Olga, a Russian immigrant trying to charm her way into the bank balance of the tycoon Tensy.

Heartbreakers is more of a comic thriller than anything else. Weaver is delicious in her role. Hackman, as always, is a scream. If you haven't thought of him as a comic actor, this one could change your opinion.

Love Hewitt (Party Of Five, Time of Your Life) is incredibly sexy as Page, the daughter who, while devoted to mom, is fighting off possible love feelings for her stargazer barman/bar-owner friend, Jack, played by Jason Lee. (So is Jack a con or not?)

Be warned that this is a Hollywood movie, so the moral and "happy ever after" end should be expected.

Also expect belly laughs and exceptionally well-timed and entertaining play-offs between a mom who wants to hang on to her little girl and a daughter who wants to fly off and learn from her own mistakes.

On the downside, the twists and turns sometimes look like a few too many and the story fails to keep one riveted all of the time. In other words, Heartbreakers could easily shed a few minutes.

But it's designed for mass titillation and I haven't seen an audience have so much fun in a long while. Well, not since Bridget Jones's Diary.