Ray Merrimen heads a crew of crooks who have successfully carried out multiple bank robberies in Los Angeles. Nick O'Brien heads a group of fairly wild cops who know who they are after, but haven't been able to catch them yet. Merrimen's crew have a big caper set up, O'Brien's squad has a man on the inside, and the scene is set for a cat and mouse crime caper movie.
The caper is good - a little over-complex, but pleasingly constructive. And the ultimate scenes bring a smile to the face. Now to look at what is not so good.
This film runs for 2 hours and 20 minutes, and feels every minute of it. Butler's character is deeply unpleasant (nothing wrong with an anti-hero as such, however...) to the extent that you don't want to spend time in his company, nor do you want him to triumph despite the fact that he is nominally a goodie. There is great emphasis on the drama of his domestic situation: this is plot irrelevant, goes nowhere, is never resolved, and has no impact on his mood or actions. O'Brien and Merrimen have a weird kind of one-upmanship jockeying for position going on: this doesn't seem to have any direct cause or effect on anything. And the final action sequence goes on for rather too long.
Like the film, in fact.
The caper is good - a little over-complex, but pleasingly constructive. And the ultimate scenes bring a smile to the face. Now to look at what is not so good.
This film runs for 2 hours and 20 minutes, and feels every minute of it. Butler's character is deeply unpleasant (nothing wrong with an anti-hero as such, however...) to the extent that you don't want to spend time in his company, nor do you want him to triumph despite the fact that he is nominally a goodie. There is great emphasis on the drama of his domestic situation: this is plot irrelevant, goes nowhere, is never resolved, and has no impact on his mood or actions. O'Brien and Merrimen have a weird kind of one-upmanship jockeying for position going on: this doesn't seem to have any direct cause or effect on anything. And the final action sequence goes on for rather too long.
Like the film, in fact.