Rat Race | |
---|---|
US theatrical release poster.
|
|
Directed by | Jerry Zucker |
Produced by | Jerry Zucker Janet Zucker Sean Daniel |
Written by | Andy Breckman |
Starring |
Rowan Atkinson Lanai Chapman John Cleese Whoopi Goldberg Cuba Gooding Jr. Seth Green Wayne Knight Jon Lovitz Breckin Meyer Kathy Najimy Amy Smart Dave Thomas Vince Vieluf |
Music by | John Powell |
Cinematography | Thomas E. Ackerman |
Edited by | Tom Lewis |
Production
company |
|
Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
Release date
|
|
Running time
|
112 minutes |
Country | Canada United States United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Budget | $48 million |
Box office | $85.5 million |
Rat Race is a 2001 American ensemble comedy film directed by Jerry Zucker, written by Andy Breckman, and starring Rowan Atkinson, Whoopi Goldberg, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Jon Lovitz, Kathy Najimy, Lanai Chapman, Breckin Meyer, Amy Smart, Seth Green, Vince Vieluf, Wayne Knight, John Cleese, Dave Thomas, Dean Cain, and Kathy Bates.
The main plot revolves around six teams of people who are given the task of racing 563 miles from a Las Vegas casino to a Silver City, New Mexico train station, where a storage locker contains a duffel bag filled with $2 million. The first person to reach the locker wins and gets to keep the money. The film has a plot similar to It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and Scavenger Hunt.
Donald Sinclair (John Cleese), the eccentric owner of The Venetian Resort Hotel Casino in Las Vegas, devises a new game to entertain the high rollers who visit his hotel. Six special tokens are placed in the casino's slot machines, and the winners are gathered together and told that $2 million in cash is hidden in a duffel bag in a train station locker in Silver City, New Mexico, 563 miles southeast of Las Vegas. Each team is given a key to the locker and told to race across the desert to the train station and claim the money. Unbeknownst to the competitors, Sinclair's wealthy patrons are placing bets on who will win. The group of patrons continue to make smaller bets throughout the course of the film, facilitated by Sinclair's assistant Grisham (Dave Thomas), who at one point hires an escort as part of a dare.