The Ref

Personally, I always thought that Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was a very funny play. Apparently, so did the makers of The Ref. This new vehicle for the otherwise sputtering screen career of Denis Leary (Gunmen) takes an odd dive into play­wright Edward Albee's bumpy terrain of familial angst and cold-hearted spite. The Ref is ultimately too soft to pull it off, but, at times, it comes close to being a genuinely funny thrashing of dysfunctional living. Leary may have finally found a movie he can click in.

Leary is almost inci­dental to the plot of The Ref, yet, paradoxically, his character is the thread that finally binds the whole pack­age together. He plays a professional burglar who's come to the quaint town of Old Baybrook to pull off a major job that will set him up for life — if everything goes as planned. Instead, he runs into cat spray, a massive alarm system and a dog named Can­nibal. So much for the early retirement plan.

His escape plan works no better. A pre­maturely hasty retreat by his getaway driver leaves Leary stranded and fending for him­self.

So he hijacks a couple —Judy Davis (Barton Fink) and Kevin Spacey (Henry and June) — in hopes of using their house as a hideaway. Leary quickly discovers that he should have stayed with Cannibal.

Davis and Spacey turn out to be hostages from hell. Their marriage crashed three years ago, and apparently they stay together only because they're so good at making each other miserable. Davis is embittered by the emotional aloofness of her mother-dominated husband. Spacey is a passive/aggressive who can't forgive his wife for an affair she had, despite the fact that he was ignoring her needs at the time she had it. They both want Leary to take their side. He just want them to shut up.

Instead, Leary becomes their de facto marriage counselor. He's got the qualifica­tions: he's seen a lot of Oprah and he's pack­ing a 9mm. Besides, the police have the town sealed tight, and he's not going any­where.

Little in The Ref is original. It possesses the crass crudeness of Ruthless People, mixed with a mellowed version of The War of the Roses. The movie's brittle tone and bitter potshots are actually softer than they sound, and it spends its concluding moments skat­ing around a false sentimentality that it manages to avoid by only the slimmest of margins.

Nevertheless, The Ref is funny, thanks in large part to the solid acting jobs done by Davis and Spacey, as well as Leary's fast-paced sense of angry humor and straight-to-the-bone absurdity. He's mad as hell, but he knows that he's going to have to take it — over and over again.

And that quality is what makes The Ref a primal howl of comedy.