Deftly Cast Outcasts Steal the Show in Levinson’s ‘Bandits’

“Is this a joke?” asks a disbelieving hostage.

“No, ma’am,” comes the reply. “This is a bank robbery.”

Turns out they’re both right.

An amusing tale of larceny triumphant, “Bandits” is an entertainment with a rogue’s imagination. The most surprising thing about this criminal history of the celebrated Sleepover Bandits, directed by Barry Levinson with his usual gift for the humanity in the human comedy, is that it manages to be surprising at all.

That’s because Harley Peyton’s droll script either makes references to or is reminiscent of so many movies--”It Happened One Night,” “Bonnie and Clyde,” “Jules and Jim,” “The Odd Couple,” “The Ransom of Red Chief” all come to mind--it’s not difficult to figure out exactly where “Bandits” is going well before its casual, leisurely pace gets us there.

Yet this quirky heist comedy manages to hold our interest even through its slower, more self-indulgent moments not just because of the writing and directing but also because of the acting, which features familiar performers (Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, Cate Blanchett) taking on diverting variations of what they usually do.

It’s Thornton who plays most against type as Terry Collins, a quite unlikely bank robber. A nervous, neurotic hypochondriac prone to all manner of fanciful ailments and allergies (including one to antique furniture), he’s introduced complaining to best friend and fellow prisoner Joe Blake (Willis) that the warden has banned the sale of that underappreciated wonder drug, fresh garlic.

Impulsive, charismatic, a prime candidate for anger management classes, the violence-prone Blake is admittedly not much of a stretch for Willis. But something has induced him to take this character more seriously, to bring more focus to the part. That something might possibly be Blanchett as Kate Wheeler, the disaffected housewife who threatens to come between the boys. One of the most consistently convincing of actresses, Blanchett has chameleon-like abilities (visible in a wide range of films from “The Talented Mr. Ripley” to “Pushing Tin” to “The Gift”) that can’t help but raise a film’s level by creating a challenge everyone has to rise to or look second rate.

Kate isn’t in the picture when the boys make their spur-of-the-moment escape from a prison in Oregon.

They hook up with Harvey J. Pollard (Troy Garity), Joe’s pea-brained cousin, a would-be stuntman whose name might be a tribute to actor Michael J. Pollard, who played the feeble sidekick in “Bonnie and Clyde.”

As they later tell Darren Head (Bobby Slayton), host of TV’s “Criminals at Large,” an “America’s Most Wanted” clone, they decide the best way to rob banks is to spend the night before the heist with the manager and then accompany him or her into the establishment early the next morning.

Joe and Terry might have continued unencumbered on their bumbling, picaresque way, robbing banks down the Oregon coast and into California and putting away money for a “tuxedos and margaritas” resort they want to start in Mexico, had they not run into Kate.

A flame-haired trophy wife at the end of her tether, Kate is a walking nervous breakdown, a deeply unhappy woman who is completely unfazed by her new companions.

“Desperate?” she says mockingly when they try to scare her by using that description about themselves. “You don’t know the meaning of the word.”

By turns wistful and feisty, Kate upsets the strange balance between Joe and Terry, to quite funny effect. A would-be singer fixated on Bonnie Tyler’s version of “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” she’s a minx who has an unsettling effect on both men.

Her ability to make her confusion as well as her choices believable is the key component in the success “Bandits” has, at least up to its rather pro forma conclusion.

Several other factors figure into the equation, starting with the film’s visual variety (it was shot by Dante Spinotti) and the good use it makes of nearly 60 locations in Oregon and California.

Casting director Ellen Chenoweth has seen to it that even the smallest roles are cast with the right kind of eccentric actors, and costume designer Gloria Gresham has gotten a surprising amount of fun out of dressing everyone, putting special efforts into the series of increasingly ridiculous disguises the boys wear.

Director Levinson has kept his hand in everything, and it’s given “Bandits” a sense of balance none of its characters can even aspire to, let alone achieve.

*

MPAA rating: PG-13, some sexual content, language and violence. Times guidelines: It’s more comic than anything else.

“Bandits”

Bruce Willis: Joe Blake

Billy Bob Thornton: Terry Collins

Cate Blanchett: Kate Wheeler

Troy Garity: Harvey Pollard

Bobby Slayton: Darren Head

In association with Hyde Park Entertainment, an Empire Pictures, Lotus Pictures, Baltimore/Spring Creek Pictures, Cheyenne Enterprises production, released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Director Barry Levinson. Producers Michael Birnbaum, Michele Berk, Barry Levinson, Paula Weinstein, Ashok Amritraj, David Hoberman, Arnold Rifkin. Executive producers Patrick McCormick, Harley Peyton, David Willis. Screenplay Harley Peyton. Cinematographer Dante Spinotti. Editor Stu Linder. Costumes Gloria Gresham. Music Christopher Young. Production design Victor Kempster. Art director Dan Webster. Set decorator Merideth Boswell. Running time: 2 hours, 3 minutes.

*

In general release.