Amiably Goofy ‘Safe Men’ in Case of Mistaken Identity

The art house isn’t the first place you’d think to go for empty-headed farce, a staple of the major studios, but that’s where you’ll find first-time writer-director John Hamburg’s “Safe Men,” a comedy of mistaken identity that’s about as empty-headed as anything out of Hollywood this year. And, in its own clumsy, eager-to-please manner, more fun than most.

Hamburg hits a low percentage of his jokes and proves that he can overreach with the worst of the studio hacks. But there’s an amiably goofy quality to the whole enterprise that earns it a lot of forgiveness. And most of that quality comes through the performances of its three stars, Sam Rockwell, Steve Zahn and Paul Giamatti.

This is Giamatti’s year. The actor steals the show from veterans Samuel L. Jackson and Kevin Spacey in “The Negotiator,” and, as Veal Chop, the right-hand man of Providence Jewish mob boss Big Fat Bernie Gayle (Michael Lerner), he gives “Safe Men” a jolt of comic energy every time he appears.

Veal Chop is the point man on the mistaken identity. Sent by Big Fat to find and hire a pair of first-rate safecrackers, Veal instead tracks down Sam (Rockwell) and Eddie (Zahn), a would-be singing team with neither talent nor, in Sam’s case, a memory for lyrics. But they share the real safecrackers’ taste for sloe gin, and that’s good enough for Veal.

Pretending to be a resident nurse for a wealthy old man, Veal lures Sam and Eddie into a bogus burglary, where they’re taken hostage and given the choice by Big Fat of admitting they’re the vaunted safecracking team and agreeing to some Big Fat special assignments, or being killed.

Soon, the bumbling impostors are trying to learn on the job, putting themselves on a collision course with both Big Fat and the two guys they’re impersonating, Mitch (Josh Pais) and Frank (Mark Ruffalo), who, judging by the level of their conversations, are the idiot savants of the safecracking trade.

All that is a setup for the film’s parade of off-balance gags and the quirky performances of its cast, notably Rockwell, who’s hilarious as a romantic mensch with a serious case of reality-avoidance. Rockwell handles Sam’s courtship of a mobster’s daughter (Christina Kirk) with a deadpan incompetence that endears him as much to her as the audience.

Scenes with Lerner’s over-the-top Big Fat and his obese son, Bernie Jr. (Michael Schmidt), are wearing, but the characters rebound in the film’s climactic set piece, which is one of the funniest bar mitzvah scenes since “The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz.”

* MPAA rating: R for language. Times guidelines: It’s just mob tough talk.

‘Safe Men’

Steve Zahn: Eddie

Sam Rockwell: Sam

Paul Giamatti: Veal Chop

Michael Lerner: Big Fat

An Andell Entertainment production, released by October Films. Writer-director John Hamburg. Producers Andrew Hauptman, Ellen Bonfman, Jeffrey Clifford, Jonathan Cohen. Cinematography Michael Barrett. Editor Suzanne Pillsbury. Music Theodore Shapiro. Production design Anthony Gasparro. Art direction Ondine Karady. Costumes Cat Thomas. Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes.

* Exclusively at the Beverly Center Cineplex, Beverly Center, La Cienega at Beverly Boulevard, (310) 652-7760; Monica 4-Plex, 1332 2nd St., Santa Monica, (310) 394-9741; Edwards South Coast Village, 1561 W. Sunflower Ave., Santa Ana, (714) 540-0594.