Word: feckless
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...Feckless Jerry (Brad Pitt) is sent south of the border to retrieve an antique pistol for his Mob bosses. His girl, spunky Samantha (Julia Roberts), thinks this desertion is just another of his many failures at intimacy and leaves him for a new life in Las Vegas. On her way, a soulful hit man (The Sopranos' James Gandolfini) takes her hostage in an attempt to focus Jerry's attention on his job. Half comedy, half action piece, the movie runs sputteringly on the not inconsiderable charm of its stars. But basically it is languid, indeterminate and uninvolving...
...dialogue will not bring a blush to a parentally guiding grownup's cheek. Here, summer vacation is under high-tech threat from a rogue teacher--vocally characterized by a comically nasty James Woods--who is easily thwarted by the busy brats. It's a weightless, but not entirely feckless, way to pass a rainy afternoon when your kids are whiney and restless...
...foreigners entered the E.U. illegally last year, five times the number in 1994. And as the demand to enter Europe has widened, so have the opportunities for traffickers who would profit from these masses on the move. Scores of immigrants now put their lives in the hands of feckless smugglers, with tragic results. Hundreds die crossing the Mediterranean into Spain each year; last week the corpses of 10 more North African immigrants washed up on Spain's southern shores...
...premature release of a local wonder drug ended in scandal when the drug turned out to be made of industrial solvent. Those fiascoes left the government skittish about embracing expensive programs, inspiring a 1998 decision not to provide azt to HIV-positive pregnant women. Zimbabwe too suffers savagely from feckless leadership. Even in Botswana, where the will to act is gathering strength, the resources to follow through have to come from foreign hands...
...Rides of the Midway (Norton; 316 pages; $25.95) involves eye-popping quantities of liquor and drugs. Those pursuits leave Noel increasingly at odds with the God-fearing Southerners around him, particularly his stepfather, who looks remarkably like Billy Graham. Mississippi-raised author Lee Durkee portrays his hero's feckless dissolution with considerable comic flair and a sharp eye for regional manners, good and bad. There isn't much profundity on display here, but readers will finish the book feeling they've been treated to quite a ride...