Who Is Cletis Tout?
The film is told primarily in flashback, as the film first follows a hitman, Critical Jim (Tim Allen), who follows and holds at gunpoint a man he believes is Cletis Tout - but who actually is Finch (Christian Slater). Because Critical Jim is so fond of film noir and other classic films (such as Casablanca and Breakfast at Tiffany's), he's willing to listen to Finch as he tells his story, imagining it as a film in progress. Finch obliges, explaining how he got to be mistaken for Cletis Tout.
Finch happened to be in the same jail with Micah (Richard Dreyfuss), who stole diamonds more than 20 years before, then hid the diamonds and soon landed in prison. With Finch's help, Micah manages to break out, and the two get new identities for themselves, courtesy of a coroner (Billy Connolly) who owes Finch a favor.
The problem is that Finch's new identity is that of Cletis Tout, a photojournalist who managed to get a mafia figure's son strangling a woman on film. The head of the mafia gets his men to kill Tout (which is how the coroner got the identity for Finch), but when Finch goes to Cletis' apartment to look for his passport, a neighbor calls the police, who inform the mafia head that Cletis Tout is still alive.
After Micah meets up with his now grown-up daughter, Tess (Portia de Rossi), he's accidentally shot by the men sent to kill Cletis. Just before dying, Micah gets Finch to promise to watch after his daughter, and thus Tess and Finch begin an uneasy relationship as they look for the diamonds.
Meanwhile, the mafia head decides to bring in a professional, and subsequently calls in Critical Jim to finish the job. However, Critical Jim is more interested in where Finch's story will end - specifically, if he'll be able to reconcile with Tess in the end, giving the story a perfect Hollywood ending.
bleak, boring