Where does a down-on-his-luck movie star go for inspiration when his career has sputtered to a four-year halt? This is the question director/writer Brad Silberling (LEMONY SNICKET’S A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS) poses for his central character--an unnamed actor played by Morgan Freeman--in 10 ITEMS OR LESS. The answer lies amid the cheap cereal packets and decomposing vegetables of a dilapidated grocery store on the outskirts of Los Angeles, a location Freeman travels to so he can research a potential comeback role. Once there he encounters Scarlet (Paz Vega), a Spanish cashier who, terminally bored with her life and job, takes out all her grievances on the unsuspecting customers in her 10-Items-or-Less line. At the end of Scarlet’s shift, Freeman’s character finds himself stranded in this desolate outpost, so he approaches her and the two strike up a deal--she will give him a ride home, but only after he has shadowed her while she finishes her errands for the day.
Freeman draws some well-observed comic material from the fish-out-of-water situations his character finds himself in, and Silberling proves his low-budget directorial chops after working on a number of bigger projects. 10 ITEMS OR LESS is a slight piece, coming in around the 80-minute mark, but the interplay between Freeman and Vega really makes the film, with the two actors finding a meaningful balance in the serious and amusing material Silberling has written for them. While Freeman’s work is typical of the high quality expected of him, Vega is a revelation. Her feisty, occasionally downtrodden, and remarkably beautiful interpretation of Scarlet provides a strong indication of her potential as an actress, and bigger things will surely follow.
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Representing a bold departure for both Academy Award-winner Morgan Freeman and director Brad Silberling, 10 ITEMS OR LESS is an intimately-scaled, two-character comedy in which Freeman plays a major movie star whose pickiness with his projects accounts for a lengthy absence from the screen. While considering a role as a supermarket manager, he decides to do some field research at a small ethnic market on the very outskirts of Los Angeles. Finding himself stranded with no cell phone or transportation, he meets Paz Vega, the feisty cashier who mans the store’s express register. When she offers to drive him back to "civilization," this initially mismatched pair discovers common ground, with the star realizing that his love for people is what drew him to acting in the first place, and the cashier gaining the confidence to interview – or as he terms it, to "audition" – for a job that could change her life.
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