Stonebrook

Product Description

Product Description Higher education meets high-stakes crime in this inventive and taut thriller about two undergrads who decide to double-cross the mob...unaware that they're being double-crossed. Amazon.com Whenever a farm kid gets accepted to a fancy college, there is the potential for comedy (Loser) or for thriller-like tragedy (The Skulls). From the opening voice-over narration, Stonebrook opts to be the fish-out-of-water thriller. With the help of a friend of the family, 23-year-old Erik (Brad Rowe) gets a scholarship to the Ivy League-type school called Stonebrook. His dorm-mate is a nerdy hacker named Cornelius (Seth Green). When his scholarship is yanked, the two of them team up to pull increasingly ambitious scams to keep him in tuition money, eventually crossing paths with mob boss Mr. Tali (Stanley Kamel). While Rowe is perfectly fine playing off his Brad Pitt looks with his Brad Pitt style of indifferent acting, Green turns in a disappointing performance. The stronger actor of the two, Green has been consistently good in movies (Austin Powers) and on TV (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), but for some reason this time he decided to overplay his nerd characteristics as if he were a reject from Weird Science. Then there's the plot. With its scams within scams within scams, logic soon flies out the window and the question of who's scamming whom is quickly replaced with "Who cares?" In the end, Stonebrook wants to be a college version of The Usual Suspects but doesn't quite make the grade. --Andy Spletzer