Wait: I also hope that 2000 kills the 'heist gone wrong' movie. A young filmmaker could be no more innovative than to write and direct a screenplay in which characters plan a robbery, execute it with panache, and live to tell the tale. In Best Laid Plans, more than one heist goes wrong, and guessing who's deceiving whom becomes a sort of parlor game. In other words, Ted Griffin's screenplay crossbreeds two annoying trends of the post-Tarantino independents.

Do yourself a favour and skip all synopses of Best Laid Plans except for this one--the cads at Fox give away far too much on the DVD box, for example, and there are, admittedly, superficial pleasures to be derived from Griffin's bendy narrative if you know as little about it as possible. We meet college buddies Nick (Nivola) and Bryce (Brolin) as they catch up on old times in a stylish bar. They are both distracted by the entrance of a beautiful woman (Witherspoon). Fade out.

Fade in. A flustered Bryce calls Nick to his opulent pad in the wee hours of the AM. It seems after his girlfriend called Nick home, Bryce got friendly with Mystery Woman at the bar, and took her back to his place. The situation between them got hot and heavy. Post-coitus, she accused him of rape, and he found out that she's only sixteen; his reputation on the line, Bryce bound her, gagged her, and is looking to Nick for advice on the next best move. That's all I'm saying.

Griffin is a crafty writer, but Best Laid Plans doesn't have the go-for-broke mentality of his Ravenous--it's a logic puzzle void of visceral charge. Even moments when its protagonists reveal their human sides have a transparency to them--it's the boy who cried wolf syndrome: why invest any emotion in these people when it's likely part of a deception, anyway? (Though Best Laid Plans does not suffer in this regard nearly as much as Wild Things.) Themes of jealousy and class struggle, not to mention a soulful performance by Witherspoon, are buried under the weight of clever.

Best Laid Plans receives the Special Edition treatment from Fox on DVD. The biggest surprise is that the video is 16x9-enhanced, and it's a beaut. Letterboxed at 1.85:1, the image is smooth, detailed, and free of artifacts. Black level is great, and flesh tones are as natural as can be given the noiric lighting conditions. Really, this is a top-notch transfer. What immediately struck me about Best Laid Plans' 5.1 Dolby Digital track was its LFE presence--there is some deep, deep bass on this disc, especially in scenes involving a raging fire. Surround presence is not as strong, although there is split activity as far as Craig Armstrong's nice score is concerned. Dialogue is well integrated. A Dolby Surround mix is also included.

In addition to two (tonally different) theatrical trailers (plus a trailer for Ravenous), three very different TV spots, cast and crew bios, and a disposable featurette, this SE offers up eight deleted scenes (of poor video quality), each prefaced by a reason for its removal. Of note: the omission of bookends featuring a prophetic bicycle vagrant--a wise idea, based on seeing them separate from the final product. The last of these cut bits is an alternative ending (when will studios get out of the habit of saying "alternate", which means something entirely different?), a variation on the current closer that simply doesn't tie up loose ends as sweetly.

Last, but not least, there is a quietly recorded commentary featuring (British) director Mike Barker and his assistant, Jeff Balis (mostly there, as far I can tell, to jog Mr. Barker's memory) that is fact-filled and thorough--had I developed any sort of attachment to Best Laid Plans, I'm sure I would've enjoyed their dialogue even more.-Bill Chambers