The plot is standard fare for a crime family comedy. Jones rats out his buddies to save his own skin, and must hide to avoid all due wrath. He foregoes both his wife and witness protection for secluded, suburban Canada, where he happens to settle down next door to the miserably married but quite charming Matthew Perry (Friends). Perry's income as a dentist is too low for his shallow wife's taste, and she hires a wannabee hit man (Amanda Peet) to kill him in the name of life insurance. Peet (Jack and Jill) just can't manage to do it -- she is new at her vocation and makes the mistake of getting too close emotionally to Perry. What ensues is a web of everybody two-timing everybody else for ten million dollars, with the occasional pause for sex or comic relief.

Many of these scenes could have been designed for the stage. Perry (right) is constantly walking into, getting caught up in and falling over things. Refreshingly, movement carries the story as much as the dialogue does. The choreography is anything but forced; Perry is natural and comfortable in a role all but borrowed from Friends. And both Willis and Michael Clarke Duncan (nominated for an Oscar for his work in The Green Mile), who plays Jones' sidekick, are lovable bad guys: villains with zeal, certainly flawed but nevertheless redeemable.

Beyond the appealing characters and an intricate plot, the film is goofy and easygoing. Perry's character emerges as the hero, using his dental skills to appease all and allow the happily-ever-afters that Hollywood prescribes. And of course the film's outcome attempts to redefine evil. Jones is bad but all business; he has trouble hurting those he loves. In a blatant but effective contrast, certain femme fatales, though criminally innocuous, do not emerge with such integrity or success. As such, the end is agreeably vindictive and truly satisfying.