A crime-does-pay comedy, told in flashback, following the transparent bluff that the two bank robbers known as the Sleepover Bandits (Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton) have now been shot dead. Their getaway driver's sideline as a would-be Hollywood stuntman provides a dead giveaway to the "surprise" ending. Mid-spree, they pick up a willing and eager hostage (Cate Blanchett), a disaffected Oregon housewife, "mentally unbalanced to a spectacular degree," who transforms the outlaw gang into a roving ménage-à-trois. The competition between Willis and Thornton had already got underway with their respective hairpieces (modified Paul Revere vs. Frank Sinatra circa 1970), not to mention their various vaudeville disguises for the bank jobs. Thornton's character, the hypochondriac brains of the operation, upstages Willis's tight-lipped man of action (if that's what he's supposed to be) at every turn, but that's no great distinction in a movie that reaches so far out to the audience that it loses its balance and topples off the screen. Barry (Diner) Levinson, giving it a shove from behind, appears to have decided that the most crucial function of a film director today is to fill up a soundtrack album with a selection of catchy tunes. (2001) — Duncan Shepherd