In this sequel to Get Shorty, Chili Palmer (John Travolta) becomes a different kind of "hit" man - he abandons the movie industry to bring his wiseguy skills and negotiation tactics to the music business. When a friend who just happens to be a music mogul is offed while they're at lunch, Chili takes the opportunity to visit the guy's wife, Edie (Uma Thurman), and pitch himself as her new business partner at her and her now dead husband’s independent record label. With a promising young pop star-in-training as his protégé (Christina Milian), Chili has to juggle her faux-urban manager (Vince Vaughn), his gay, wannabe-actor bodyguard (The Rock), Russian mobsters, and an eloquent gangsta music producer (Cedric the Entertainer) to save the label and land a hit - and keep from getting popped himself.

The movie’s name is Be Cool and that is exactly was the movie is, cool. Oh sure, the movie really didn’t need to be made but the movie still has the style and panache that made Get Shorty so good. The movie picks tight up where Get Shorty left off with an ex-hitman who has a style of his own and always manages to get things to go his way. The movie has a little of everything action, comedy, a rich story and good plot, style and most of all entertainment. It just sucks you in with its story as all the characters are rich and very three-dimensional and you can’t but help but be entranced by them. That’s when the movie is at its greatest when its telling its story when its at its weakest is when it forget to tell its story and is more enamored with itself and its own sense of style.

The movie has one of the more stellar casts of characters from John Travolta’s the cool ex-hitman to Uma Thurman a widowed music producer, to Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as a gay bodyguard, with Vince Vaughn as a music producer who thinks he is black, and with Cedric the Entertainer as gangsta rapper. But of all these great performances and for the most part they all did put in really good performances it was the Rock who steals the show. Sure Travolta is great once again as Chili Palmer but it’s the Rock who plays a character so far from anything we have ever seen that all his scenes are showstoppers. He adds almost all the humor to the movie and saves it from Vince Vaughn who almost single handedly manages to sink the movie. He is just too over the top, too far fetched and without everyone else around him putting in stellar performances he could have almost ruined the movie. But the movie delivers, its cool, its stylish and it’s entertaining.
4 stars out of 5