With a decent cast and a kind of silly Thelma & Louise vibe, this Brit-com has a lot of potential. But it's assembled without any real style and after the first half can't figure out where it should go. Shannon (Driver) is a nurse whose best friend Frances (McCormack), a struggling actress, is helping her nurse a broken heart when they over hear a group of bank robbers mid-heist. In the morning, they find out that the cops (Williams and Eldon) have no leads ... so they decide to blackmail the baddies and get a cut of the loot themselves. From here, Shannon and Frances get increasingly over their heads as they bluff their way from the bumbling low-life hood (Dyer) to the brutal mastermind (McNally) to the sinister big boss himself (Gambon).

There's a stream of genuinely funny dialog here as the characters and situations are set up and get progressively more complicated. Driver and McCormack give solid performances, hinting at depth and making Shannon and Frances people we like and root for. And the supporting cast is superb--clever, bright and just a little cartoonish, with a couple of hilarious cameos thrown in here and there (Session's looping director, Bonneville's befuddled farmer). Then just as we start really enjoying it, the film stalls completely, getting stuck in tired movie cliches ("Forget the police, we'll get these guys ourselves!") and sinking into an increasing fantasyland of implausibility and silliness. It simply loses its way and never recovers. Besides some groovy Thomas Crown split-screen stuff, director Smith (Bean) never adds much in the way of visual interest, while the script by Fuller (Spice World) never fully takes hold of the possibilities. Yes, it's entertaining to watch these novices outsmart the ruthless thugs, but it's also painful to see this promising film run out of steam halfway through.

themes, language, violence

16.Jul.01

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