BANDITS
Released: October 12, 2001
I saw the "Bandits" trailer and it did its job - it made me excited to see the movie. As you can imagine, the trailer was successful, I saw the movie and here is the review. Well, as much as I liked PARTS of this movie, it just did not add up to a cohesive whole. Bruce Willis teams up with his "Armageddon" co-star Billy Bob Thornton who, himself, teams up again with his "Pushing Tin" co-star Cate Blanchett in a potentially very amusing bank robber/love triangle adventure/romance. However, just when the film finds its groove director Barry Levinson switches gears into a different emotional mode. Is it an action film about a team of unusual bank robbers or is it a duel for Wills and Thornton to win Blanchett's heart? While I wasn't totally engrossed in the movie I did find enough worthwhile ingredients to make for an entertaining, though fragmented, movie watching experience. Surely not horrible like Levinson's "Sphere" (the sci-fi turd starring Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone and Samuel L. Jackson from 1998) but not up to his own standards of quality he showed us he's capable of in "Wag The Dog" (1997), "Sleepers" (1996), "Rainman" (1988) or 2000's "An Everlasting Piece".
131 Minutes
MGM/UA