Safe Men

Safe Men is a 1998 American criminal comedy film written and directed by John Hamburg (in his directorial debut), and stars Sam Rockwell and Steve Zahn as a pair of aspiring lounge singers who are mistaken for ace safe crackers, and get mixed up with a Jewish mobster, Big Fat Bernie Gayle (Michael Lerner) and Big Fat's intern, Veal Chop (Paul Giamatti).

Hamburg later wrote screenplays for a few films, such as Meet the Parents, Zoolander, Along Came Polly and I Love You, Man, which he also directed.

Reception
In August 1998, The New York Times called it a "low-energy comedy with sufficient signs of willingness to stray off the beaten track to indicate that somewhere down the line its writer and director, John Hamburg, will create something far better." Roger Ebert gave the film (one star out of four), saying it "whirls wildly from one bright idea to the next, trying to find a combo that will hold the movie together. No luck." Mick LaSalle gave it "There's no dramatic urgency, no distinct point of view, no question of plot to keep an audience interested. All Safe Men has is the charm of the actors and the occasional friskiness of the writing. That's almost enough to keep the picture alive, minute by minute. Alive is not the same as thriving, but it's better than dead.

In March 2002, The A.V. Club began its review with: "The vast majority of direct-to-video films are not very good, lacking not only star power and budget, but ideas and imagination. Every once in a while, though, a movie is denied a proper theatrical release not because it's bad, but because it just isn't the sort of film for which a studio is willing to risk a multimillion-dollar advertising budget. Safe Men is one of these movies, a modest but engaging crime comedy."

A.V. Club also called the film a "sort of Bottle Rocket Lite, sharing a deadpan, consistently sustained comic tone, as well as a palpable affection for its characters. Almost everyone in Safe Men is pathetic on some level, but first-time writer-director John Hamburg grants even his least significant characters a humanity that gives the film a sort of warm, fuzzy glow.

DVD release
The movie was released on DVD on August 15, 2006 with new commentary features and Tick, a short film by John Hamburg about independently contracted bomb defusers starring Michael Showalter.