Let's just get this out of the way: Finders Keepers will give its directors Bryan Carberry and J. Clay Tweel's a foot in the door in the feature documentary field. That isn't nearly as bad some of the other leg-related jokes in Finders Keepers, which finds both the humor and tragedy in the battle between two North Carolina men: recovering addict John Wood, whose amputated and embalmed leg wound up inside a grill in a storage unit, and entrepreneur Shannon Whisnant, who bought the unit at auction and used the leg as the ticket to the stardom he'd always craved, including selling shirts reading "I'm Friends with the Foot Man." Wood asked for his leg back, Whisnant said no, and their ensuing tug-of-war over the mummified limb brought them onto the global stage, finally ending up on the Judge Mathis show. The leg acts as MacGuffin for both the class conflicts between the Woods and the Whisnants, as well as the men's battles with their personal demons. During an ill-advised stint on the reality show Dukes of Haggle, Whisnant accuses the television producers of trying to make him look like a dumbass, but documentarians Carberry and Tweel never condescend to their hella-Southern subjects. And that's why Finders Keepers gives them a leg to stand on.
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