October
12, 2001
| Imagine a tangy goulash of Jules and Jim and Butch Cassidy
and the Sundance Kid, with a side order of Bonnie and Clyde
and a smidgen of It Happened One Night, and you'll be ready for
Bandits, a funny, frisky and flavorsomely eccentric comedy about
bank robbery, romantic triangles and chronic hypochondria.
Directed
by Barry Levinson (Rain Man) with alternating currents of tight
discipline and indulgent playfulness, this freewheeling road movie takes
the audience for a wild ride along the Pacific Coast, from Oregon to
Southern California, following the checkered careers of two escaped
convicts who become mismatched partners in crime.
Joe
Blake (Bruce Willis), an impetuous career criminal with a razor-sharp
survival instinct, breaks out of prison, more or less on a whim, simply
by commandeering a cement truck and crashing through the gates. He's
accompanied - reluctantly, at first - by a far more thoughtful convict,
Terry Collins (Billy Bob Thornton), a tightly wound neurotic who constantly
complains about allergies, phobias and dietary necessities. (You get
the impression that he escaped from prison primarily because the warden
restricted the availability of fresh garlic.) Very shortly after they
become fugitives, Terry is eager to get back behind bars. Joe, however,
has other plans.
Bandits
isn't a movie that takes a rigorous approach to enforcing the laws of
probability. In fact, the first several minutes play as an interlocking
chain of improbabilities, starting with the prison break and continuing
through scenes in which Joe sweet-talks a lady into providing a getaway
car, then fakes his way through a bank hold-up while armed with nothing
more lethal than a Magic Marker.
Despite
all indications to the contrary, Joe is a man with a plan: He wants
to enjoy an early retirement as a restaurant owner in Mexico. That's
OK with Terry, but only if he's the one who does the cooking. That's
OK with Joe, provided that Terry joins him in financing their dream
with a few more bank robberies.
Fortunately
for all parties concerned, the fugitives meticulously plot a modus
operandi that leaves little to chance, and requires stealth and
subtlety more than gunfire and improvisation. On the night before a
typical heist, they politely but firmly take the bank manager and his
family hostage. Then, after spending the night with their captives,
they drive the manager and his loved ones to the bank before business
hours, empty the vault - and speed away before alarms can be tripped
or police can be alerted.
Their
simple plan is improbably successful. The fugitives preserve their anonymity
with a series of laughably obvious wigs and similarly transparent disguises.
("You look like Neil Young," a hostage tells Terry, who readily
agrees.) Even so, they become nationally famous as "The Sleepover
Bandits." They get by with a little help from Joe's easily distracted
cousin, Harvey Pollard (Troy Garity), a getaway driver and would-be
movie stuntman. (Trivia buffs, take note: The character's last name
may be a tribute to Michael J. Pollard, who played the getaway driver
in Bonnie and Clyde.) But their routine is disrupted when Terry
brings a not-so-innocent bystander into their inner circle.
It's
not entirely Terry's fault. In the course of making a hasty escape,
he's struck and nearly run over by Kate Wheeler (Cate Blanchett of Elizabeth),
a fair-skinned, flame-haired beauty who's been driven to extremes by
a disappointing life and a neglectful husband. Kate insists on taking
Terry to his hideout. When she arrives, Joe is enraged - then, slowly,
intrigued. Pretty soon, he's swapping pop music lyrics with the fugitive
housewife. (Their recitation of Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of
the Heart" is one of the most sweetly goofy scenes you'll see in
a movie all year.) Terry feels left out. But not for long.
Levinson
nimbly maneuvers through a variety of mood swings and tonal shifts,
keeping the audience off balance - pleasurably, for the most part --
and uncertain of what to expect next. More often than not, Bandits
is bright and light, generously sprinkled with whimsy and absurdity,
reveling in turns of phrase and quirks of character. Terry initially
is reluctant to retire in Mexico: "I have sanitation issues!"
Kate makes a bad first impression: "She's an iceberg," someone
says, "waiting for the Titanic."
On
the flip side, however, Bandits begins with a portentous flashforward
to a botched robbery-in-progress, and frequently pauses for excerpts
from a reality-TV show that appears to be the last testament of "The
Sleepover Bandits." The possibility of an unhappily-ever-after
ending is never far from your mind, even while you're giggling at some
edgy exchange between Joe and Terry, or laughing uproariously as Kate
frantically prepares dinner, slicing and dicing at warp speed while
she sings along to another Bonnie Tyler tune, "Holding Out for
a Hero."
Willis
makes all the right moves as he glides through the proceedings with
relatively little reliance on his trademark smirk. He effortlessly communicates
Joe's steel-trap intelligence while dropping provocative hints of a
wistfully romantic sensibility. Thornton is almost too convincing while
conveying Terry's incessant fussiness -- at times, you may wonder why
Joe, Kate or some passing stranger doesn't throttle him - but that makes
the character all the more amusing and engaging.
Blanchett
completes the triangle with a vibrant performance that runs the gamut
from full-blown hysteria to teary-eyed resignation and beyond without
ever hitting a wrong note. Late in Bandits, Kate claims she can't
choose between Joe and Terry because, as far as she's concerned, "Together,
you're the perfect man." You might not share that appraisal - in
fact, you might violently disagree - but Blanchett make you understand
what Kate means and, perhaps more important, appreciate how much she
believes it.