In his latest comedy “”Bandits,”” Baltimore native Barry Levinson (“”Diner””) dares to modernize the George Roy Hill classic “”Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,”” portraying Butch as a blathering hypochondriac and saddling old Sundance with anger management issues. The result? A two-hour marathon therapy session for two insecure bank robbers who couldn’t buy happiness with all the gold in Fort Knox.
Rarely does one film squander such potential so rapidly. Right off the bat, the casting of Bruce Willis and Billy Bob Thornton as escaped convicts turned bank robbers seemed intriguing. They even concoct an appealing plot device: Willis, as the strong, silent Joe Blake, and Thornton, as the agitated, neurotic Terry Collins, earn the name “”The Sleepover Bandits”” by spending the night at a chosen bank manager’s home, then knocking over the person’s facility in the morning. Throw in the immensely talented Cate Blanchett as the third leg of a potential love triangle, and you simply have to sit back and count the box office cash, right? If only it were that simple.Bandits’ problems start early and come often. Almost immediately, the fate of its antiheroes is revealed by a television journalist reporting from the Sleepover Bandits’ final heist, which takes place at the Alamo Savings & Loan – not the first joke Levinson hits us over the head with. From there, the jumbled narrative dashes in all different directions, alternating from the duo’s last stand to a pre-heist interview conducted with the aforementioned broadcast journalist, and finally to their prison days and eventual rise to media infamy as daring bank robbers. Such weaving is forgivable if there’s a purpose, but here it just seems like poorly planned editing.The director isn’t completely to blame for the film’s listless disposition. Harley Peyton’s mundane screenplay boasts so many dry spells, it practically cracks. Bored with its own concept, the film eventually invents desperate gimmicks in hopes of providing a spark, stooping so low as to claim one bank manager suffers from a rare offshoot of narcolepsy, prompting him to fall asleep at inopportune times. Oh, the hilarity. Even the chemistry between Willis and Thornton seems forced. Unlike Butch and Sundance, who were friends long before they were criminals, Joe and Terry rob banks out of necessity, not out of camaraderie. You never even get the impression that these guys like each other, let alone that they respect a code of honor among thieves.Blanchett careens into the story like a breath of fresh insanity, and her purpose is two-fold. Initially she’s meant to disrupt Joe and Terry’s constant bickering, but eventually she serves as the picture’s final and most contrived gimmick, nitiating the inevitable and inconceivable love triangle that ultimately tears these men apart. At first, Blanchett finds a sparring partner in Thornton, their interactions crackling with an untamed wit and energy previously unseen in the picture. But in time, even these two are left spinning their wheels under Levinson’s utter lack of direction. And when Blanchett can’t save your picture from the doldrums, you know it’s time to lock this one away in a bank vault and pray no one ever lets it out.Final Grade: DBy Sean O’ConnellOct. 11, 2001