Review of Bandits (1987) by Jessica H — 15 Sep 2011

"Love is a wish that hides in your heart, and you're the only one that knows about it".

What a great line, that practically made the whole movie worth watching.

Put Barry Sonnenfeld at the helm of Bandits and you'd probably have another jolly good buddy/caper/love triangle flick with snappy, well-timed dialogue akin to Men In Black. But Barry Levinson seems out of his depth with this material. The Bandits he directed suffers from a multiple personality disorder. Willis & Thornton do not play off each other quite as well as Jones & Smith. There are bright moments, like when hypochondriac Thornton falls to the dancefloor in a self-imagined paralysis. "Mind if I cut in?" quips Willis. "Yeah...sure...I lost the beat." But these highlights aren't strung together as much as we'd like.

What about that disorder? Well, characterizations are inconsistent. Willis & Thornton are a bankrobbing tandem where Willis is set up as the brawn and Thornton the brain. Some exchanges are set up purely to show the dumb side of Willis for a chuckle, yet in the very next scene he's just as mentally quick as Thornton, whose laundry list of phobias come and go. Between them is Cate Blanchett, a woman bored with her unloving husband and through a chance encounter joins the gang and becomes romantically attached to both criminals. Her consistency forms the bonds that keep the movie together, despite its other drawbacks, which include a largely unnecessary time-shifting screenplay and a rather dubious final heist to contend with. The wonky tone is much more comedic than dramatic, and while some deliveries fall flat, some had me bursting with laughter.

Stringing together scenes that look like they could have been filmed years apart between rewrites, this could have been a REAL mess. But y'know, most of the dialogue still has spark and I kinda liked the characters and humor, so for final sentencing I'm going to give these Bandits time off for good behavior..