MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Bank Robber’ Can Pull Off Heist but It Can’t Buy Love

“Bank Robber” (citywide) is moron bait that offers the promise of not one but two former wholesome-teen TV actresses in the buff, and an NC-17 rating earned on a thrust-action technicality, as the only lures into its interminable story. Let the robbee beware.

The ads misleadingly suggest a sex thriller, but the smug, wandering tone is all failed black comedy. Patrick Dempsey stars as a dopey slacker who pulls an off-the-cuff heist as a way to buy trinkets for the object of his obsession, Olivia D’Abo, a three-timing hussy undeserving of such a heartfelt show of affection as a bank robbery.

Our anti-hero gets away clean and holes up in a downtown flophouse, where--in the movie’s idea of a highly repeatable comic conceit--he’s recognized by and extorted by all who see his mug, from the bellboy to the pizza deliverer.

Only one kind soul doesn’t take advantage of Dempsey’s newfound cache: Lisa Bonet, a hooker with such a heart of guess-what she undercharges the kid. (Their NC-17 sex montage actually looks unprovocative enough to pass for an R, but at least it provides a short break from the satire.)

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The bulk of the movie consists of Dempsey--who’s described by a newscaster as “misguided and possibly retarded”--avoiding cons and going nutso in his dank hotel room; by the time the still-boyishly handsome actor starts smearing pizza sauce on his face and shooting at bugs, it’s turned into something like a sophomore-class restaging of “Barton Fink.”

To escape the claustrophobia, debuting writer-director Nick Mead cuts away inconsequentially--a la “A Perfect World”--to the lawmen looking for Dempsey, played in drive-by, paycheck-collecting cameos by Forest Whitaker and Judge Reinhold. Their comic conceit is that they’re feel-good cops who get misty-eyed at the thought of catching Dempsey so they can get him therapy for his unhappy childhood.

With no real narrative to wrap up, “Bank Robber” doesn’t have a traditional final scene so much as it just sort of ends, packing up its drowsy misanthropy as the credits roll like a kid whose cap-gun just ran out of ammo. And not a blank too soon.

‘Bank Robber’

Patrick Dempsey: Billy

Lisa Bonet: Priscilla

Olivia D’Abo: Selina

Judge Reinhold: Officer Gross

Forest Whitaker: Officer Battle

An I.R.S. Media Inc. and Initial Groupe presentation. Director-writer Nick Mead. Producer Lila Cazes. Executive producers Jean Cazes, Miles A. Copeland III, Paul Colichman. Cinematographer Andrej Sekula. Editors Richard E. Westover, Maysie Hoy. Music Stewart Copeland. Production design Scott Chambliss. Running time: 1 hour, 32 minutes.

MPAA-rating: NC-17. Times guidelines: It includes one sex scene, several glimpses of female nudity, some mild gunplay, casual drug use, foul language and all - around amorality.