Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
Sam Stone hates his wife Barbara so much that he wants her dead. He's ecstatic when she's taken by a duo of kidnappers who want $500,000 ransom in exchange for her life. Fully intending to ignore every one of the kidnappers' demands in the hopes that they do him a favor and murder her for him, the two confused kidnappers have to figure out how they're going get their money, and what they're going to do with the overbearing Barbara.
Ruthless People has a genuinely clever, tightly wound dark comedy premise — a husband who actively roots for his wife's kidnappers — executed with real wit and escalating absurdity. The plot is its standout strength, full of sharp reversals and comic payoffs. The acting is solid and game (Bette Midler, Danny DeVito, Judge Reinhold all commit) but rarely transcends the material into something truly memorable. Cinematography is functional mid-80s studio work with little visual ambition. Novelty is decent — the premise has a nice nasty twist on the kidnapping genre — but the execution is fairly conventional Hollywood comedy filmmaking. The ending wraps things up satisfyingly if a touch neatly.