Mad Money (2008)

Mad Money arrived in January of 2008 with three women on the poster and a premise about robbing the Federal Reserve. Callie Khouri, who wrote Thelma & Louise, directed it. The film concerns Bridget Cardigan (Diane Keaton), whose husband is downsized into debt, and her scheme to skim worn bills from the shredder at the Kansas City Fed. She recruits Nina (Queen Latifah), who runs the machine, and Jackie (Katie Holmes), who pushes the carts. The three women move money under the noses of the cameras and the men who run the place. It grossed $26.4 million and pleased 22 percent of critics.

The gender arithmetic here is worth a moment. Three women, a woman director, a heist aimed at an institution that has just thrown a man out of work. There is an empowerment streak in the setup, and Khouri's pedigree invites a reading of it. The film does not articulate a thesis. It wants a lark, and a lark it remains. The corporate downsizing that starts the trouble gives the scheme a whiff of economic resentment, then the screenplay loses interest in the resentment and gets on with the sight gags.

The cast is diverse in the unremarked way that was ordinary before casting became a public argument. Nina is a Black working mother. Her race is not a subject. Roger Cross and Stephen Root appear. Nobody explains anything to the audience about representation, and the film is not the worse for it. This is a mild crime comedy with a female center of gravity and no sermons attached. It lectures nobody. It means no harm. It also means very little else, and it was gone from theaters before anyone could decide whether it meant anything at all.