The Whole Nine Yards

British political satire sits behind Jonathan Lynn’s crime comedy. Lynn co-wrote Yes Minister with Antony Jay, came to film with Clue and later directed My Cousin Vinny, and the setup here, where everyone is trying to have everyone else killed at once, comes out of that school. Matthew Perry took the part during a Friends hiatus, and filming began in Montreal. The title is not decoration but a line: Cynthia calls the 10 million dollar trust that both Janni and Jimmy are chasing the whole nine yards. The performance Roger Ebert kept returning to was not one of the leads. Ebert called Amanda Peet, who plays the dentist’s assistant Jill, perfect in the part, and noted that Peet had appeared in 17 previous movies without inspiring any cartwheels. Reviews landed in the middle; the box office did not, with 41.3 million dollars spent against 106.4 million taken worldwide. The sequel four years later, The Whole Ten Yards, was rated PG-13 rather than R. A good fit if you can watch without looking for a moral centre and take Peet’s cheerful ambition to kill people for a living as the real engine of the jokes. Not for anyone who will tire of how much weight rests on Perry walking into glass doors and into Michael Clarke Duncan.