A fun and stylish entry into the canon of films about getaway drivers, Eenie Meanie starts off in a simple place before expanding into something refreshingly deeper than one might expect. With exhilarating action sequences and an outstanding cast – headlined by the always reliable Samara Weaving – Eenie Meanie is a late summer surprise that’s so good one wishes it got a theatrical release ahead of its streaming debut. It’s the kind of solidly constructed genre effort that has “cult favourite” written all over it.
Poor Edie (Weaving) hasn’t had the easiest of lives. After being taken away from her reckless, drug addicted father (Steve Zahn) as a kid and placed into a number of abusive or otherwise neglectful foster homes, Edie fell into a life of crime as a teen, showing particular skill behind the wheel of a car before she was even old enough to drive. As an adult, Edie continues to struggle, but she’s committed to staying on the straight and narrow, working a thankless job as a bank teller and trying to go to school. Another wrench gets thrown into her life plan when Edie finds out she’s pregnant with the child of her oafish, deceitful, career criminal ex-boyfriend, John (Karl Glusman). When she goes to deliver the news to him, Edie finds John in a violent fight for his life because another one of his get-rich-quick schemes has expectedly ended in failure. Edie’s former employer, Nico (Andy Garcia), demands a three million dollar payback from John, and since she doesn’t want to see this doofus die, she reluctantly agrees to get involved with a plan to rob a casino after a high stakes poker game.
Writer-director Shawn Simmons (creator of series The Continental and Wayne) isn’t afraid of drawing comparisons between Eenie Meanie and other genre classics. A dash of Oceans’ 11 here, a pinch of Gone in Sixty Seconds there, a healthy sprinkle of Thief, and a heaping tablespoon of Baby Driver help to give Eenie Meanie a certain degree of familiarity. It takes a minute to get going, though, as Eenie Meanie gets off to a somewhat rocky start, with a lot of inorganically delivered expository dialogue dumped in a short period of time. But once all that’s out of the way, Simmons’ story settles into a comfortable, briskly paced groove that barely lets up until the end.
Simmons’ script is sharp, witty, and sometimes even quite moving. The deeper Edie and John get into their troubles, their relationship becomes fascinating. It’s always clear that John is a liability in almost every situation, only has moments of ingenuity, and will just keep dragging Edie further down into the criminal abyss. He unequivocally sucks as a person. The viewer actively roots for Edie to get away from this guy, but Simmons crafts the characters’ backstories in such an intricate way that her loyalty for this lug doesn’t feel entirely misplaced. There’s a large amount of feeling and human truth on display throughout Eenie Meanie that elevates this above the level of a traditional heist yarn, especially when the story takes a darkly unexpected turn late in the film, and it’s handled with an appropriate amount of seriousness for something that has been relatively light in tone up to that point.
Visually, Eenie Meanie offers up a number of exceptionally choreographed car chases and stunts, shot with a maximum amount of coverage to keep things interesting. The choice to set the film in and around Cleveland (and Toledo for the big heist) also allows Simmons’ film to stand out among the pack. The mixture of modest suburban landscapes and visual reminders of the city’s decaying manufacturing past makes Edie’s arc feel like a rose growing out of concrete. She’s both better than the setting and a product of it, and Simmons strikes a nice balance between those two parts of Edie’s personality.
The cast brings a lot of nuance to each of their roles, led by Weaving’s commanding, tough talking, and intelligent performance as the smartest woman in any room. Glusman, an actor more commonly associated with edgier filmmakers like Gaspar Noe and Nicolas Winging Refn, gets a chance to change things up with a more comedic leaning role as a confident, but inept criminal, providing Weaving with a great romantic and professional foil. Zahn and Garcia are the veterans on hand tasked with providing Eenie Meanie with its requisite heartfelt speeches, and both nail the tone Simmons seeks perfectly. There are also noteworthy supporting turns from Jermaine Fowler (as the witty, smooth talking mastermind behind the Toledo gig) and Marshawn Lynch (as Edie’s biggest and flashiest dressing criminal rival).
Eenie Meanie is a popcorn movie done right. It gives the viewer plenty of spectacle and laughs, and more than enough substance to make the whole thing worthwhile. It’s the kind of low key action-comedy that studios have somehow forgotten to make over the years, which probably explains why it’s getting a streaming debut and not something with a bit more fanfare. It’s a movie that will have no trouble finding an appreciative audience, and it lingers in the memory longer than expected. Buckle up and get ready for a good time.
Eenie Meanie streams on Disney+ in Canada and Hulu in the U.S. starting on Friday, August 22, 2025.
