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Bungling an artistic heist
The Hard Word (R) (102 min.) - Good heist flicks offer more than gripping drama. Overcoming the heist "formula" - read: series of dizzying double, sometimes triple-crosses and the well-planned larceny - requires wit and the occasional self-parody.
Think David Mamet or Quentin Tarantino. Their thrillers are loaded with waggish dialogue and unpredictable twists.
Writer/director Scott Roberts' latest film, the Australian thriller The Hard Word, aspires to be astutely Mamet-like and strives for Tarantino's highly stylized look, but instead feels mostly calculated and plodding.
Guy Pearce (Memento and L.A. Confidential) stars as Dale Twentyman, roguish and unshaven; he's the eldest and craftiest of three brothers (don't fret, as formulas dictate, one brother's the slow, sweet type and the other impulsive and angry) whose fraternal ties extend to their day job: bank robbery.
Wait. It gets better.
Incarcerated at the film's start, Dale works in the library - one brother works in the prison's kitchen and the other just lifts weights - where he cultivates an appreciation for self-help tomes. And how convenient. It turns out his wife Carol, played by Rachel Griffiths (Six Feet Under) with a detached but omniscient aplomb, is cheating on him with the Twentymans' lawyer, Frank (Robert Taylor), who, in his spare time, also lines up heists for the brothers.
The film is precipitated on a far-fetched heist, having the brothers rip off bookies at the Melbourne Cup. Of course, things go awry, and it's up to the brothers' skill and chutzpah to outwit Frank, liberating themselves from his manipulations, while also succeeding romantically.
Granted, Roberts draws fine performances from his cast, but Pearce and Griffiths, left, cannot help that their characters are broadly etched cliches. Nor can they redeem the film's vexing gags, more predictable than humorous.
Griffiths, with her cool sexuality and dyed blond hair (style mavens note: with the new hairdo, Griffiths bears a disarming resemblance to John Cameron Mitchell as Hedwig from Hedwig and the Angry Inch), owns her scenes. Pearce, too, proves versatile.
Watching the actors, who clearly relish some of the film's campy scenes, is, admittedly, fun at times. But The Hard Word is uneven. One minute we chuckle at a clever zinger and the next we listen as a character discusses possible incest.
Talk about jarring. C.
- BRIAN ORLOFF, Times staff writer