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BANDITS
6/10
USA
2001
director : Barry Levinson
script : Harley Peyton
producers include : Levinson, Peyton
cinematography
: Dante Spinotti
editing : Stu Linder
music : Christopher Young
lead actors : Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, Cate Blanchett, Troy Garity
122 minutes
Breezily
enjoyable bank-robber comedy, with a basic premise lifted straight from
The Friends of Eddie Coyle:
Terry (Thornton) and fellow ex-con Joe (Willis) are the ‘sleepover bandits’,
taking bank managers hostage overnight before making their early-morning
‘withdrawals’. Their plan works just fine – until unhappy housewife Kate
(Blanchett) stumbles into the scene and, before you can say Jules et
Jim, falls for both of them in turn…
Scriptwriter
Peyton adopts what seems to be a clumsy double-flashback structure, with
the gang’s exploits being ‘told’ to us by the anchor of a tabloid-crime
TV show who interviewed the bandits shortly before their violent demise.
At one point Terry tells Kate that the problem with being smart is that
‘there’s no suspense, you always know what’s going to happen next,’ and
the movie appears to be robbing us of suspense by straight-away
telling us our heroe’s fates. Another apparent ‘problem’ in the screenplay
is Joe’s dimb-bulb cousin Harvey (Garity), aspiring Hollywood stuntman
and the gang’s getaway driver. He’s a distractingly superfluous figure
– but when Levinson and Peyton pull the rug from under our feet with their
satisfying final twist, the Harvey subplot suddenly makes perfect sense,
along with the wider flashback approach.
But
this is really a movie about characters rather than action – the bank-robbery
scenes are just OK, but Levinson is clearly much more interested in the
central menage a trois. Willis coasts on his well-worn ‘smirking
asshole’ routine as horny hothead Joe, and he’s made to look very one-paced
by the engaging performances from Blanchett and, especially, Thornton
– the motormouth Terry could hardly be further removed from the taciturn
Ed Crane in his other current release, The Man Who Wasn’t There.
His phobias are the weirdest since Sybil’s unseen mother in Fawlty
Towers, and include ‘growing shorter’, Benjamin Disraeli’s hair, and
Charles Laughton – and he has a Zelig-like ability to manifest
the symptoms of anyone in his vicinity.
In
lesser hands, Terry could easily be a grating figure – but Peyton and
Thornton catch it just right: he takes Kate to an atmospheric coastal
diner, and after visiting the jukebox the romantic strains of ‘Just the
Two of Us’ fill the air. Kate compliments Terry on his choice – but he
confesses it’s a result of obsessive-compulsive need to press the ‘A 1’
buttons. It’s a typically sly use of soundtrack music (Bob Dylan, and
U2’s ‘Beautiful Day’ feature prominently), while the diner scene is one
of several lifted out of the ordinary by Dante Spinotti’s terrific neon
bleu nuit cinematography. It’s obvious why he’s Michael Mann’s DP
of choice – one visual coup in particular is worth the price of admission
on its own: a shot of Blanchett’s face illuminated by the light of a refrigerator,
taken from inside the fridge. So when she closes the door, it’s
an automatic, witty, perfect fade to black.
21st
November, 2001
(seen
15-Nov-01, Odeon West End – London Film Festival)
by Neil
Young
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