Friday’s seriously slapstick comedy “The Out-Laws” wonders: If you find out your future in-laws are criminals, would you marry into a crime family? And would that really matter?
Adam Devine’s Owen Browning is an easygoing bank manager engaged to Nina Dobrev’s Parker McDermott. Neither are thrilled when her mightily eccentric parents, Billy (Pierce Brosnan) and Lilly (Ellen Barkin), suddenly show up.
Then Owen gets super stressed when he quickly discovers that the notorious “Ghost Bandits” who robbed his bank are his future in-laws.
It could be said these two veterans are the comedy’s real heist masters, stealing laughs at every juncture. “Out-Laws” is an Adam Sandler-Netflix comedy. For Brosnan, that was enough.
“Adam Sandler makes very good comedies and,” Brosnan, 70, said, “he is 100 percent behind his productions as a producer, as an actor, as an artist. And I enjoyed the character.”
Who makes an insider’s James Bond 007 joke midway through the often violent slapstick.
Yes, Brosnan, aka Bond #5, allowed, that wasn’t in the script. “It was completely my idea,” he said in a phone interview. “It wasn’t in the text. There was a gun gag, but it wasn’t in the text that Adam just did his James Bond pose. Once he did that, the lines fell away – and as soon as I said it, I knew it was going to be in the movie. It was just a good moment.”
Call Brosnan unstoppable with his fierce work schedule. “I’m very aware of time past, time present. Time future. I have as much passion now for the work at hand as I’ve always had.
“This chapter of my life as an actor is a man who’s got some meat on the bone and been, you know, kicked around a bit. But is still standing.
“It’s the work. It’s the passion of being an artist, to be an actor, to constantly deal with the constructing and destroying of yourself and the character to find some truthfulness.
“Find something that is entertaining, meaningful. You know that the audience knows who I am, have somewhat seen enough of me over the years, so every now and then you try to be an unexpected surprise. You try and stretch yourself.”
For Brosnan that means several upcoming films. “Fast Charlie,” an action thriller filmed last year. “That was definitely a labor of love — and a great opportunity to work with James Caan in his last movie. He was utterly brilliant. And courageous, in all the ways he just gave himself.”
Additionally, Brosnan’s “just finished” a movie with Jessica Lange and made two other movies in Ireland last year.
“I’m working.”
“The Out-Laws” streams Friday on Netflix