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Review by Susan Granger
3½ stars out of 4
Bruce Wills and Billy Bob Thornton play bickering ex-cons who become
America's Most Wanted bank robbers in this screwball caper comedy. After a
somewhat confusing, chaotic setup in which they're heisting the Alamo Savings &
Loan in L.A., a flashback reveals who they are and how they got there. They're
"The Sleepover Bandits" who take a bank manager and his family hostage the night
before a theft. Hampered by an anger-management problem, Willis is a suave if
impulsive man of action, while the more thoughtful Thornton is an
obsessive/compulsive hypochondriac. They dream of margaritas and tuxedos,
running a little hotel near Acapulco. To this end, they recruit Willis's cousin
(Troy Garity), a dim-witted stunt man, to drive the getaway car. But life gets
more complicated when they take a hostage, Cate Blanchett, an unhappy housewife
who's giddy with delight at their antics, falling in love with them both,
reasoning, "I can't choose between you because, together, you're the perfect
man." "She's mentally unbalanced to a spectacular degree," Thornton astutely
observes. And the plot is punctuated with interviews on TV's "Criminals at
Large." Working from Harley Peyton's screenplay, Barry Levinson's direction is
expertly sharp and funny, including a brief nod to the motel scene in "It
Happened One Night." While the Willis-Thornton comedic chemistry clicks, Cate
Blanchett delivers a deftly daffy, richly funny and volcanically sexy
performance, the kind that deserves Oscar attention. As does Victor Kempster's
production design and Gloria Gresham's costumes which are - to say the least -
outrageous. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "Bandits" is a smart, savvy,
wickedly funny 8, evoking a quirky, contemporary "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance
Kid" romp.
Copyright © 2001 Susan Granger
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out of 4
