If you have the misfortune of watching The Crew (2000), there are a couple of things that might have drawn you to it that are a little surprising.  The first is the quality of the cast.  There are a couple of A-listers, albeit older ones, led by Richard Dreyfuss and Burt Reynolds.  They play two of a four-man title team who used to be important mafiosos.  The second notable aspect is related to the first: the leading lights are Carrie-Anne Moss.  If that name does not immediately ring a bell, you might recognize her better as Trinity from The Matrix series.  Now there is a set of films with some Catholic teeth.  I wish I could say the same for The Crew.  What she is doing in this movie, along with the others, is anyone’s guess.  But, hey, as they say in multiple scenes here, forget about it.

The one thing that narrator Bobby Bartellemeo (Richard Dreyfuss) cannot forget about in The Crew is the past.  He narrates throughout, starting with a vignette on how he got together with the three others of the eponymous four.  For him, Mike “The Brick” Donatelli (Dan Hedaya), Tony “Mouth” Donato (Seymour Cassel), and Joey “Bats” Pistella (Burt Reynolds), it all begins in New Jersey where they are born and raised.  They each dreamed of being a “wise guy” in the Italian crime family, and they got their wish.  They made a name for themselves in the 1960s as part of the mafia.  Fast forward to the present, and they are simply one more set of retirees living out their days in Miami Beach.  Retirement does not bring the peace they believe they should have.  Instead of dealing with septuagenarians, their building and surrounding neighborhood are overrun by young people.  A possible solution would be to move to a more acceptable area, but they do not have the same bankroll as they had when they were in the crime business.  Thus, they are forced to do the kinds of things people their age do, but sometimes they attempt to live like the old days.  This includes getting menial jobs, such as Joey working for, and repeatedly fired from, Burger King.  It is he, who has his best ideas when he is rendered unconscious, that comes up with a scheme to clear out their apartment complex from unwanted riffraff.  Mike’s line of work is in a morgue, and recently he has had the body of a deceased individual come through on whom he tried his mortician skills.  Using that corpse, and obtaining a shotgun, they plan to put it in the lobby and blow its head off.  However, because this is something for which they are out of practice, none of them pull the trigger.  They get the job done accidentally, but the victim eventually turns out to be Louis Ventana (Manuel Estanillo), a senile Columbian drug lord.  This is one of a few headaches following the staged murder for Bobby.  Another is the fact that his associates now feel like they are back in the life of crime, pulling off further stunts like bingo, and purchasing expensive items.  Another is the increased media and police scrutiny.  This last bit brings another unexpected twist.  Among the authorities beginning to ask questions is Detective Olivia Neal (Carrie-Anne Moss).  She is somebody for whom Bobby has been looking for a number of years because she is his long-lost daughter.  Because he had been unable to leave the mob, his wife had taken Olivia as a child and run off to Florida, which is what brough him south.  The fact that she is now a cop is problematic, but an even bigger concern is Tony.  The normally quiet “Mouth” discusses everything they had done with a stripper they all know named Maureen “Ferris” Lowenstein (Jennifer Tilly) as they lay in bed.  As a result, when she summons the four to her work place (and this Catholic will say no more about her employment), she blackmails them into agreeing to kill her stepmother, Pepper Lowenstein (Lainie Kazan), otherwise Ferris will talk to the police.  Regardless, the four have no intention of carrying out the assassination.  Instead, they kidnap Pepper, replace her with a fake skeleton, and set her house on fire.  Unfortunately, the flames from the attempted arson manage to reach the house of Raul Ventana (Miguel Sandoval).  He is not only Pepper’s neighbor, but the Louis’ son.  Between the death of his father and the destruction of his mansion, Raul believes there is someone targeting his business and family.  As for the authorities, because of the oddity that was the Louis “murder” and now the fake skeleton, something is not right.  Olivia once again tries to question Bobby.  Somehow, she ignores his strange behavior, made so because they have Pepper in his apartment.  Instead, it is her cheating ex-boyfriend, Detective Steve Menteer (Jeremy Piven), who is the first to make the connection between Bobby’s people and what is happening to Raul.  Unfortunately, he is also in Raul’s employ, and Detective Menteer alerts the drug lord rather than calling the department.  Raul sends a number of goons to Bobby’s building, and they are followed by Detective Neal.  It results in her, Pepper, and Tony being captured by Raul’s men.  Bobby manages to get away, but he, Joey, and Mike realize they are going to need some help to make a rescue.  Thus, they call a number of their former mafia colleagues to come to Miami, armed to the teeth, so they can get their loved ones back.  It ends with Raul behind jail, the four the new owners of their apartment complex, and Bobby finally admitting he is Detective Neal’s dad.

While that all sounds like a happy ending for The Crew, it also stretches believability.  My constant thought throughout the proceedings was how do four successful criminals get to this point in their lives not only free from prison, but relatively broke.  Beyond the incredulity I felt, there is also a list of questionable aspects of the film.  It is rated PG-13, but it features a lot of crime, the desecration of a corpse, and far too many scenes inside a strip club.  There is also the matter of these mafiosos making it to this point in their lives.  To that end, Bobby asks a rhetorical question wondering why would anyone would live any other way.  To this Catholic, it gets to a deeper idea of whether it is nature or nurture that determines who we are.  What Bobby is essentially saying is that his and his friends’ New Jersey upbringing is responsible for turning them into criminals.  There is some truth to this idea.  After all, how many people become priests or nuns who are not raised in the Catholic Church?  Actually, the answer might surprise you.  One prominent example would be St. Edith Stein, or Sister Teresa Benedict of the Cross.  For some religious orders, regardless of their sex, the people who enter are expected to give up their birth name as part of giving their obedience to their community and God.  I guess it is easier to stick with the name with which Edith Stein was born, as a Jew, in Poland.  Her family were of German heritage, but she found her academic career stymied because of her religion and sex.  Between that and feeling a call from God, she became a nun.  Unfortunately, this did not save her from the gas chamber during the Holocaust.  I bring her up because her background would never suggest that she would become a female religious.  In other words, Bobby and company did not have to become criminals.  God puts in us a desire for Him, for the good, and our title four chose otherwise.

If it were up to me, I would choose something other than The Crew to watch.  It has little to recommend it, and the premise is kind of silly.  It is a pity that this cast was wasted on this material.