Bandits

Rating:
Summary: Mediocre Offering From the A-Team
Review: This otherwise average storyline & predictable movie is saved by versatile actors & actress extravaganza. This movie wasn't captivating enough to have us felt for the characters. At all times, we felt like a third party watching a parody taking place in a zoo. "Clinical" is a word to sum up the feel of "Bandits". The bandits were so gentle & kind-hearted & when they started to exchange food recipes with their hostages, we couldn't help but not taking them seriously & at all times, we never had the urge of sitting on the edge of seats because we knew that the hostages wouldn't be harmed, & the bandits were simply on a road trip accummulating wealth for their superannuation, & they got a bored house wife to shag along the way. Well, if you have nothing better to do on a lazy Sunday afternoon, perhaps, this movie might amuse you & your pet. Truly an inoffensive movie

Rating:
Summary: Odds & ends of different genres add up well
Review: "Bandits" is hard to classify and is a bit more unusual than it at first appears to be. As a comedy, it isn't all that funny. As a drama, it isn't that engaging. As a romance, it dances too much around its menage a trois theme. And as a crime caper, it isn't especially original or exciting. Yet, oddly, as stirred together by director Barry Levinson, these elements, weak as they are individually, work together to make a very entertaining movie. Of course, it doesn't hurt that it stars three enormously talented actors who would be fun to watch just doing their grocery shopping.

Joe and Terry [Bruce Willis and Billy Bob Thornton] are doing time in prison. One day the impulsive Joe commandeers a cement truck and smashes out of prison, taking the nervous, neurotic Terry, who's also a total hypochondriac, with him. They have no choice other than to revert to their old profession, bank robbing. These are no ordinary thieves, however, because they go out of their way not to harm anyone. Soon they are dubbed The Sleepover Bandits and are all over national TV. They also manage to accidentally pick up a hostage, a bored, frustrated housewife named Kate [Cate Blanchett], who turns out to be crazier than Joe and Terry combined. To make matters even more complicated, she falls for both of them, and they respond, much to the detriment of their friendship.

Each actor works his magic. Thornton shows a heretofore unseen comic ability. Blanchett continues to carve out memorable characters. Here she reveals a spirited wild side that I look forward to seeing again. As for Willis, I continue to believe he is our most underrated star. Though this role is no stretch for him, he still gives Joe characteristics that make him unique.

One personal reservation: It occurred to me while watching 'Bandits' that a reason the comedy elements may not work as well as expected is because there are is a lot of gunplay in the movie. To me, guns are inherently menacing. It doesn't matter that the characters waving them are unlikely to use them. I have a hard time thinking of someone as being witty and adorable when he or she is pointing a loaded gun in someone else's face. I'm not sure how to respond, and that represses my laughter mechanism. I'm not sure if this reaction is peculiar to me or not.

Rating:
Summary: What a fun movie!
Review: Before watching the movie Bandits, I was neither a fan of Bruce Willis nor Billy Bob Thornton but after this movie, I won't be so quick to dismiss a movie just because it stars someone I don't care that much about. The decision to watch this movie wasn't one I made, but I've been raving about it to anyone who will listen ever since.

Billy Bob Thornton is hilarious as the hypochondriac who is a rather reluctant prison escapee and even a more reluctant bank robber. As good as the scenes with Thornton and Willis are, the screen really lights up with the appearance of Cate Blanchett as the unhappy housewife who accidentally gets involved with our two bumbling robbers.

I laughed myself silly while watching this movie! I enjoyed it so much I had to watch it again the next day and enjoyed it even more. The only complaint I had was that the interview sections with Willis as Joe and Thornton as Terry seemed to interfere a bit with the story. That said, on the second viewing, the interview portions made perfect sense.

The climactic ending, which is not all it appears to be at first, is so clever and the perfect ending for a movie that is just plain fun!

Rating:
Summary: Becomes boring towards the end
Review: Interesting comedy with good performances by Bruce Willis and Bili Bob Thornton but mainly by Cate Blanchett. But it drags on in the end making you think about fast forwarding it...

Rating:
Summary: Not as funny as you are led to believe !
Review: Bandit, the latest film from director Barry Levinson but I think it is below his standard. All 3 principal performers (Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, and Cate Balanchett) gave good performances but the movie itself is not that fun to watch. The movie is told through flashback and early in the movie, it is said that both Bruce Willis and Billy Bob thornton's characters died. They play bank robbers who never usual violence in their activities thus the public love them. I won't spoil the plot twist but for movie fans you should see what is coming. The movie was promoted as action comedy but it doesn't have enough funny moments nor actions. Two of Bonnie Tyler's biggest hits (Holding Out for a hero & Total Eclipse of the heart) are featured in the movie which was nice.

The DVD comes with both Full Screen and Wide Screen version (a feature that was promised to be included in every DVD when DVD format is announced but rarely found these days). The picture is fine and the Dolby 5.1 is excellent. Overall, it is worth a rental only.

Rating:
Summary: overated trash
Review: Bandits is a 90 plus minute romp of 2 guys who befriend a lonely housewife and become celebrity thieves. The movie has strong initial appeal. The cast is wonderful and the director is respectable(good morning vietnam, Avalon). Billy Bob in particluar is coming off of his incredible performance from "the man who wasn't there" and he is mildly entertaining in this one.

The problem with the movie comes in many forms. It's hard to watch a woman leave her home and use both these men throughout the film while they dimwittingly put up with it. I don't intend to put out any spoilers, but the fights between our non-heroic leads are laughable and silly. They start out crashing through a window in a fight in one scene, only to in 2 minutes become friends again, like old times. The movie also trys to convince us that adultery is okay, as long as the husband is the way he is in this movie. The second problem with this movie is it's incredible amount of induced boredom. About halfway through the film, my filmgoing partner and I just sat there begging for this movie to end in any form possible.

Despite my rantings, there are indeed a couple of funny moments- like bruce willis pony tail. The ending is clever but it's also a bit of a stretch. There are some great shots, such as when Cate Blanchett's character opens the fridge and you are exposed to a great blue color that surrounds the picture. The idea of the movie is great as well: celebrity bandits having fun and being fun. Unfortunately, this movie is anything but fun and enjoyable, and I highly reccommend you rent another film by Barry Levinson, or Billy Bob, or Cate, or Bru...well, maybe you should be more selective with Mr. Willis...

Rating:
Summary: Don't understand how people can like this one...
Review: I consider myself a reasonably open-minded person, but I can't grasp how people could actually enjoy this movie. I saw this movie on the plane to South-Africa, and boy, was it boring. It was so boring I had to ask the flight-attendant for a parachute.

The acting in this movie is pretty good, as always, but the characters are totally unlikable : one is an annoying hypochondriac, the other is one of those strong and silent types. The script was just BAD, BAD, BAD !!

I can't understand why this movie is promoted as a comedy. There were 2 scenes in the whole movie that made me smile. No one as laughing during the entire movie. I think it would have been better it they would have advertised it as a romantic crime-drama.

Rating:
Summary: Bandits: A Comedic Gem
Review: I saw this movie in theaters three times, and I laughed out loud every time. Told in flashback, Bandits showcases Billy Bob Thornton (Terry) and Bruce Willis (Joe) as a bumbling Bonnie and Clyde, robbing banks and gaining notoriety along the way as the "Sleepover Bandits" (for their technique of "kidnapping" bank managers and their families the night before a robbery). With Terry's neuroses and Joe's gusto, the two form an unbreakable bond as the brains and braun behind this humorous train of robberies. Along the way, they are subjected to Joe's simple-minded cousin, Harvey, and their kidnapped love interest, Cate Blanchett (Kate). The foursome keeps the film believable, as the robberies themselves become less and less likely to succeed due to Joe and Terry's rising fame. In the end, Harvey's stupidity never costs them the bundle, Kate's hysteria works in their favor, and the two friends come out of it as close as they were when they stole a cement truck to escape prison in the film's opening sequence. The characters are all exaggerations of personality quirks, but the genuine bond between them creates a net of believability. From the love triangle that emerges between Joe, Terry, and Kate, to Harvey's obsession with a girl in "pink boots," Bandits truly holds up as a unique comedy on many levels. The plot is creative enough to hold any viewers attention long enough to fall in love with one (or all) of these characters, and the dialogue is witty enough to keep even repeat viewers chuckling. Check out Bandits, and see one of the funniest movies to come out in recent months.

Rating:
Summary: Stole 2 hours of my life.
Review: For a buddy-movie / road-movie / crime-caper, *Bandits* carries an unusually high pedigree, with such luminaries as Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, Cate Blanchett (her involvement convinced me to rent this movie), and no less than Barry Levinson as director. So why is *Bandits* such a godawful waste of time? Well, it doesn't help that the story is told in flashback, after our bandit heroes have already been shot dead. This is a way of telegraphing that our bandits heroes may very well NOT be dead, after all. (And to shove the point further across, one member of the gang dabbles in special effects and wants to be a stuntman. In other words, if the ending is a surprise to you, you are dumb.) Anyway . . . Willis and Thornton escape from jail, formulate plans to run a restaurant / hotel in Acapulco, and commence gently inviting themselves into bank manager's homes (wearing ludricous disguises) in order to more easily rob some banks. They earn the monicker "Sleepover Bandits". Midway through, they pick up a bored, possibly insane housewife, played by Blanchett, who falls in love with both of them. "Together, you're the perfect man!" she purrs. Sez who? A nattering hypochondriac + a colorless "man of action" = a perfect man? Okeydokey. At the very least, Thornton and Willis have perfectly dreadful hairpieces (and I don't mean the ones they don for their disguises, either). Thornton gets most of the laughs, I suppose, but when he starts in with "I have a phobia of old movies", you know the screenwriters have exhausted the hypochondria goldmine. As for Cate Blanchett: I'm afraid that I have overestimated her abilities and / or discretion in choosing projects. This is a far cry from *Oscar and Lucinda*, the masterpiece that introduced us to her. Between *Bandits* and *Fellowship of the Ring*, I'm starting to think she's a kooky bust-out...

Rating:
Summary: Great Potential that Almost Delivers!
Review: Bandits comes across to me as a film that is so close to being great, that where it fails, it pulls the rest of the movie down with it. All the potential coupled with everything that succeeds indicates the greatness of this film, but because of all of this, the flaws--however minute or inconsequential--stand out more abundantly. And so inevitably, the most generous praise I can bestow upon it is that this film is above average in every respect, and yet just shy of where a more honed production would have rendered it.

The script, first off, is clever and subtly humorous where necessary. The direction is apt, expertly combining the modern tendency for rampant cuts and high-octane fury with the more traditional, emotional aspects inherent in the story. The characters themselves, however, can be both a blessing and a curse. While Willis' and Thornton's characters are intended to be opposites, there is not equal attention given to develop them. Willis--despite perhaps a small intention to keep his character distanced from the audience--is never allowed to explore the character to his internal depths. Thornton, on the other hand, is an elaborate--if verging on too eccentric--gentleman who the audience quickly comes to relate to and enjoy. And so, when Cate Blanchett's character enters the film--and with the greatest performance of the cast--one finds it hard to comprehend her torment as she feebly tries to overcome her emotions towards both gentlemen. The concept of the love triangle itself is well thought out and interesting, however its implementation left a little to be desired.

The film that ensues in the end, though, is a complex story that necessitates well-developed and intimate characters, but the film--and also, the male leads--fail to stir up the audience's compassion as required by the subject matter. A better production could have turned this film into an entertaining exploit into the criminal mind, not to mention the ennui of the traditional housewife, but instead it exposes mundane characters in a promising setting. Little work would have been done to turn this film into a bona-fide gem. Fortunately for us, though, there is evidence of this potential in the nonetheless entertaining film that we were given. Despite its faults and shortcomings, Bandits does not seem like a waste of two hours. It is fun, it is humorous, it is entertaining. But, alas, it is also not developed as extensively as it could have been.