Bruce Willis, Cate Blanchett, Billy Bob Thorton

Director Barry Levinson's lackluster new crime comedy Bandits couldn't be more loosely based on the true story of two wanted men, one cool, and one more of a cucumber. The two bust out of prison and begin a bank-robbing spree to finance their dream of opening a nightclub in Mexico. They become known as the Sleepover Bandits for taking their targeted bank's manager and family hostage in his own home the night before the robbery. The next morning, they go to the bank where the manager can open the safe before business hours and without tripping any alarms.

The details of this part of the movie do mirror the real life of the dastardly duo of Terry Conner and Joseph Dougherty, two Midwestern men who used the sleepover technique to great success in the mid '80s, before landing in prison for life. But apparently, Levinson wasn't familiar with the much more interesting true tale that could have been told.

In the Hollywood version, against Terry's better judgment, he and Joe team up with Kate, a hyperactive housewife with a penchant for Bonnie Tyler power ballads. Cate Blanchett plays the peevish Kate, by the way, like a jittery Julia Roberts on her third double espresso. Not pretty. Anyhow, as love would have it, Kate sees in Joe the rugged hero she's been holding out for, and in Terry a sensitive innocence she can't help but snuggle up to. Together, for Kate, they make the perfect man.

So, with nothing to lose but their lives, and the audience's attention, the trio decide to risk it all in the most unbelievable climax since the flying bus in Swordfish. They go for one final bank job that will send them south of the border and into a life of tuxedos and margaritas.

Even with Academy Award winning talent and a blank check for a budget, a relationship/action/comedy flick is about the hardest hat trick for a director to pull off, as evidenced by recent flicks like The Mexican, Lucky Numbers and the aforementioned Swordfish. Alas, Oscar-winner Barry Levinson has done little better than his predecessors. You'd think the same lens leader who struck creative and box-office gold with Rainman, Bugsy and Wag the Dog would know better. Instead, Barry's Bandits pinball between bank-robbing bravado, doe-eyed Romeo and blithering bumpkin so often that fans of drama, romance and farce are bound to feel the same thing, disappointed.

If you want to see the only movie in the past thirty-five years that does manage to ménage gunfights, a love story and a few belly laughs, rent Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, starring Paul Newman, Robert Redford and Katherine Ross. A mostly true western, by director George Roy Hill, about a couple of good ol' bank robbers and the teacher lady who loved 'em.