30 Minutes or Less

30 Minutes or Less Information

30 Minutes or Less is a 2011 American action comedy film directed by Ruben Fleischer starring Jesse Eisenberg, Danny McBride, Aziz Ansari and Nick Swardson. It is produced by Columbia Pictures and funded by Media Rights Capital.

Plot

Nick (Jesse Eisenberg) is a slack, marijuana-fuelled pizza delivery driver who has trouble completing the "30 Minutes Or Less" policy that his employer issues, leading to a reprimand from his boss Chris (Brett Gelman). Nick's school teacher friend Chet (Aziz Ansari) discovers that Nick has slept with and still has feelings for Chet's twin sister Kate (Dilshad Vadsaria). It is also revealed that Chet was the reason Nick's parents divorced, because he told Nick's father that his wife had been cheating on him with a lifeguard. After a heated argument, the two end their friendship.

Meanwhile, two older delinquents named Dwayne King (Danny McBride) and his friend Travis Cord (Nick Swardson) are miserable living under the shadow of Dwayne's domineering father the Major (Fred Ward), incidentally a multi-million dollar state lottery winner. Dwayne confides in lap-dancer Juicy (Bianca Kajlich) about his contempt for his father, who is squandering Dwayne's presumed inheritance while nowhere near dying anytime soon. Juicy tells him she knows a hit-man who will kill Dwayne's dad for $100,000, so that Dwayne can receive the inheritance 'sooner'. At Travis's suggestion, he and Dwayne devise a plot to kidnap a complete stranger and strap a remote-controlled bomb to his chest, to compel him to rob a bank for them for the hit money Dwayne needs. After seeing an advertisement for the pizzeria that Nick works at, they order a pizza and wait for a driver to come to their hideout. When Nick arrives, Dwayne and Travis (who are wearing a gorilla and monkey mask) assault him and Travis chloroform's Nick.

When Nick wakes up, he finds a vest rigged with explosives strapped and buckled onto his torso, with both a timer and a cellular phone-activated trigger. Disguised, Dwayne and Travis tell him his situation: if he does not rob a bank within 10 hours, the bomb will detonate. For effect, Dwayne demonstrate another bomb blowing up a stuffed Teddy bear. Dwayne states that if Nick dares going to the police, they will remotely detonate the bomb, as they will be monitoring him. They leave Nick their number to call them and send a frantic Nick on his way. In his panic, Nick goes to a school where Chet is working and desperately pleads with him to help. After plans to deactivate or remove the bomb are dashed, Chet says he has no choice but to rob the bank. Still uneasy, Nick asks Chet to assist him. Chet reluctantly agrees.

After purchasing toy guns, spray paint, energy drinks and ski masks for the robbery, Nick suggests stealing Chet's family friend's Datsun 280ZX so that the police will be unable to track the license plate number of Nick's Mustang. Nick then stops by his workplace to tell off his boss and quit, then goes to see Kate and say some cryptic 'final' words to her. Nick and Chet go to the bank, hold it up and obtain money upon forcing a bank employee named Sandra (Rebecca Cox) to empty the vault. The bag of money, rigged with a dye pack, accidentally explodes inside the bank, and Chet forces Sandra to get another bag of money. Meanwhile, the bank manager has pulled the alarm, forcing Nick and Chet to flee quickly as Dwayne and Travis, outside, watch the commotion. A police officer arrives, but when Nick shows him the bomb vest, he runs away. More police arrive, and after a car chase that ends up with Nick and Chet crashing the 280ZX, the two successfully evade capture by sneaking onto a city bus. Nick calls Dwayne and tells him he has the money. Dwayne says he and Travis will meet him at an abandoned rail-yard to make the exchange. Dwayne and Travis go to a restaurant instead as Dwayne calls up Juicy to get her hit-man ally and to head to the rail-yard. When Dwayne asks Travis to be the one to detonate the bomb if the time comes, Travis starts to become unsettled.

After getting his Mustang, Nick waits for Dwayne and Travis at the rail-yard while Chet hides nearby to avoid disclosing his involvement in the scheme. Instead of Dwayne and Travis however, Juicy and the hit-man Chango (Michael Peña) are the ones who arrive to pick up the money. Nick hands Chango the money and expects Chango to give him the code which will deactivate the bomb. Chango claims he doesn't know what the code is. When Nick keeps asking him for the code, Chango gets aggravated and holds Nick at gunpoint. Chet runs in and beat down Chango with a metal bar while Nick incapacitates Juicy. The two grab the money and escape.

As Travis is giving Dwayne a haircut, Dwayne ends up getting a call from Nick who berates Dwayne for not giving Chango the code to the bomb, and dares him to detonate the bomb with the money at his side. Pulling over near an abandoned factory, Nick tells Chet that this is a tactic for when the third call is made to them, the details to leave the money and the codes will be made. Overly frustrated by the turn of events and when Nick doesn't answer the phone again, Dwayne activates the speed dial number on his phone for the bomb to explode, but finds that Travis altered the numbers while Dwayne wasn't looking because he was getting nervous about Dwayne's gradually violent attitude. When Dwayne thinks that Nick is calling him, it is instead Chango who informs him about what had happened during the exchange. When Dwayne comments that he is a pawn in his plan with Travis shaking his head not to go into further details, Chango states that the deal is off and that he'll be coming after Dwayne next. Rethinking their plan, the two head to Kate's apartment in their masks and kidnap her while she was in the restroom. Meanwhile, Chango breaks into the Major's house to find information regarding Dwayne's location and finds a hand-drawn map to the scrapyard. While there, the Major attacks him with a pen gun as Chango asks why he is protecting Dwayne if he is the one that called the hit. The Major is then shot in the stomach by Chango after a struggle. Upon applying some peroxide, Chango uses the information he found in Dwayne's room to head to the scrapyard. After Chet's next attempts to remove the bomb vest, Dwayne calls Nick to let him know that he has Kate and if he doesn't meet at the scrapyard to give him the money, he will kill her.

Nick arrives at the scrapyard and exchanges the money for Kate. Dwayne gives Nick the code (which is Dwayne's favorite sexual position: 69 69 69) to deactivate and unbuckle the bomb with just minutes to spare. Dwayne then tells Nick to walk away, but Nick deduces that as soon as Nick and Kate turn around they will be shot and their bodies will be burned. Dwayne agrees by having them at gunpoint but Nick has Chet fake having a sniper on them by pointing with his laser pointer. Dwayne and Travis believe him and drop their weapons and leave with the money. However, Nick is brutally knocked out by Chango who now has Dwayne at gunpoint, demanding for the money. Dwayne gives him the money but Chango decides to still kill him. Travis, who has a flamethrower, torches Chango. While being burned and on the ground, Chango successfully shoots Dwayne in the shoulder and shoots the gas tank on Travis's back and it explodes.

Nick wakes up and takes the money and leaves with Kate and Chet. Chango dies in the fire and Dwayne saves Travis from dying by beating the fire of the exploded gas tank with his shirt. Dwayne gets in his van to go kill Nick and steal the money. He chases them down and has Nick at gunpoint just as his van explodes, seemingly killing him. Nick reveals he reactivated the bomb and put it in Dwayne's van. Afterwards the trio talk about what they'll do with their money but it squirts blue dye and out of anger Chet screams "Sandra!".

In a post-credits scene, Dwayne (who survived the bomb explosion), Travis, the Major (who is recuperating in a wheelchair), and Juicy are seen in an advertisement for their new family business called "Major Tan: Tanning Salon."

Alternate Ending

In the alternate ending, Nick, Chet and Kate drive off with the money and discuss what they will do with their newfound riches. Meanwhile, just miles behind them, Dwayne is revealed to have survived the explosion that occurred moments earlier. Annoyed with his plan's failure, he goes to his father's mansion to see if Chango killed him. Dwayne finds his dad on the floor suffering from his gunshot wound and tells about his plans for the tanning salon/brothel. His father is excited and tells his son that he is proud of him. The final scene is at the Four Seasons in Atlanta, where Kate is managing the special events program. She joins up with Nick and Chet, who are chilling out by the pool enjoying their new lives. In addition to this, the late Chango has been blamed for the bank robbery so all is well.

Cast

Jesse Eisenberg as Nick Davis
Danny McBride as Dwayne King
Aziz Ansari as Chet Flanning
Nick Swardson as Travis Cord
Dilshad Vadsaria as Kate Flanning, Chet's sister
Bianca Kajlich as Juicy, a lap dancer that Dwayne befriends.
Michael Peña as Chango, a hit-man that is an associate of Chango.
Fred Ward as the Major, Dwayne's dad.
Brett Gelman as Chris, Nick's boss at a pizza restaurant.
Rebecca Cox as Sandra, a bank employee.

Production

Filming took place in Grand Rapids, Michigan, from July to September 2010; and a bank robbery scene was filmed at the vacant Ludington State Bank building"?most recently a Fifth Third Bank"?on James St. in Ludington, Michigan. The film's screenplay was written by Matthew Sullivan and Michael Diliberti, and the film was produced by Ben Stiller, through his production company, Red Hour Films. The film was released on August 12, 2011.

Promotion

A screening of the film took place at the 2011 San Diego Comic Con with actors Aziz Ansari, Nick Swardson, Michael Peña and director Ruben Fleischer.

Soundtrack

There are at least 8 songs in the soundtrack for 30 Minutes or Less:

The Hives " "Tick Tick Boom"
Beastie Boys " "Sure Shot"
Generationals " "I Promise"
Glenn Frey - "The Heat Is On"
Band of Horses " "Laredo"
Kid Cudi " "Is There Any Love?"
M.O.P " "Ante Up"
Third Eye Blind " "Jumper", referenced multiple times throughout the film.

Reception

Critical response

30 Minutes or Less has received mixed reviews from critics. Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 45% based on reviews from 156 critics, with a rating average of 5.3 out of 10. The site's consensus is, "It's sporadically funny and it benefits from a talented cast, but 30 Minutes or Less suffers from a disjointed narrative, and too often mistakes crude gags for true lowbrow humor".

On Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, gives the film a score of 49% based on 37 reviews.

N Pfeifer from FleshEatingZipper was more favorable: "With [Fleischer and Eisenberg] involved, you figure it's going to be impossible for this movie to live up to the marketing's hype. While not the best work from either, [it's] still an enjoyably vulgar romp."

Box office

The film grossed an estimated $13 million in its first weekend, below studio expectations but not a loss due to the film's relatively low budget. It was released on Blu-ray and DVD on November 29, 2011 with Our Idiot Brother. It was released on September 16, 2011 in the United Kingdom.

Similarity to real-life events

The plot of the film bears a striking resemblance to a real-life bank heist gone wrong.

On August 28, 2003, pizza delivery man Brian Douglas Wells entered a bank in Erie, Pennsylvania, with a bomb strapped to his neck. As police approached Wells, the bomb detonated, killing him. Wells had similar motives and was surrounded with people who strongly resemble characters depicted in the motion picture.

Despite the similarities to the case, the cast and filmmakers claimed to have had no prior knowledge of the incident, although the screenwriters have admitted to being "vaguely aware" of it for legal purposes.