Where the Money Is is a 2000 American crime comedy-drama film directed by Marek Kanievska, written by E. Max Frye, and starring Paul Newman, Linda Fiorentino and Dermot Mulroney.
The film, a box office failure,[1] was Newman's second-to-last live-action theatrical release, though he would continue doing award-winning voice-over and live action television work for a number of years.
Preferring a nursing home to prison as a means of escape, Henry had studied yoga and vajrayana as a way to fake the symptoms of a stroke.
In the final scene, Henry and Carol Ann are shown at a jewelry store whose security system mysteriously stopped working.
She convinces the sole sales assistant to cut off her wedding ring in the back room with Henry left out front, pretending to be wheelchair bound again and preparing for a new heist.
It's about how Paul Newman at 75 is still cool, sleek and utterly self-confident, and about how Linda Fiorentino's low, calm voice sneaks in under his cover and challenges him in places he is glad to be reminded of.
"[4] Jay Carr of The Boston Globe said that "the film never drags, but one of the enjoyable things about it is its way of taking its time letting us get to know and savor the characters", adding that "The test of any caper movie is whether you like the crooks enough to root for them.
"[5] Ann Hornaday of the Baltimore Sun wrote: "Where the Money Is" is devoid of that ineffable quality Hollywood calls "edge" (a polite term for gratuitous blood and profanity).
"[7] Elvis Mitchell of The New York Times called the film "a mild caper comedy that seriously trades on the audience's relationship to its star, Paul Newman" while noting that "sadly, the subtext and context of 'Money' is that everyone's better days are a distant memory.
"[8] William Arnold of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer praised the presence of its leads, and the credits of its producers and director, but said that "as is so often the case with even the best-intended movies these days, all this talent somehow adds up to amazingly little.
"[9] Peter Stack of the San Francisco Chronicle called it "a forced, implausible flick that loses its energy as it tries to gain momentum.
"[12] Richard T. Jameson of the Mr. Showbiz website wrote that "if Newman weren't playing the enigmatic Henry, there'd be little to separate Where the Money Is from a hundred low-key, indie-class endeavors destined for straight-to-video limbo.
The settings are few and nondescript (albeit subtly stylized in matters of color, Oregon regional texture, and very persuasive institutional anonymity).
Although the sanitarium personnel, patients, and other peripheral folks have been intelligently cast and directed, the picture is essentially a three-character movie, and while Linda Fiorentino and Dermot Mulroney (as Carol's husband Wayne) have both done deft work now and again, each has also disappeared into the wallpaper of countless forgettable flicks.
They should have remembered what good bank robbers know: Planning a clever job is crucial, but you're arrested if you don't execute it properly.
"[14] A critic for the BBC's teletext service Ceefax wrote: Even at seventy-five, Paul Newman is by far the most lively thing in the film.
"[18] Geoff Pevere of The Toronto Star panned the casting of Fiorentino as the leading lady in a role he said "feels like a role written for Sandra Bullock", adding: While Newman remains one of the most effortessly watchable male movie stars ever to shift his hips in Panavision, you can't help but wish Where The Money Is had required a little more of him than the dusting off of some of his most time-tested crowd-pleasers: the indifferent shrug, the look of disbelieving perplexity, the boozy philosophizing, the butter-wouldn't-melt cool.
As it is, just everything about Where The Money Is quickly fades but Newman's eyes: Still piercing, still blue and still capable of holding an entire movie in their orbit.