Bandits
Director: Barry Livingston
IMDB link

This is a brilliant movie. Absolutely phenomenal. Day-umn.

Bruce Willis and Billy Bob Thornton start in this flick as two escaped convicts who go on a bank-robbing spree after an impromptu bank job with a hi-lighter. The duo hook up with a front man (Troy Garity) and begin their career as the "Sleepover Bandits".

Bruce Willis plays a convict with anger management problems (perhaps not a stretch from other roles). Billy Bob Thornton plays a convict with a variety of mental illnesses - many induced because he is easily suggestible. These two as a bank robber duo is comical - Thornton politely tries to make small talk about the dinner with one of the hostages, who is breaking down in tears with the trauma of being a hostage in her own home.

An interesting meeting occurs with Thornton and Cate Blanchett's car, and shortly after that an even more interesting and chaotic scene with Cate Blanchett (who proves to be more talkative and engaging than her car). She ends up driving him to their hideout, and shacks up with the bandits.

Without spoiling too much, they fall in love with her, and she falls in love with both of them. These relationships provide great comedy at some points, other times passable drama. This is the core of the movie, and builds the flick into a neurotic comedy of errors. I laughed. I cringed. I vowed to kill crazy women who interfere with my bank robbing gang ;)

The neurotic duo of Thornton and Blancett steal the show. Willis almost becomes a secondary character, necessary only so that there is someone to play the love triangle off of who isn't neurotic (though he is Angry - the kind of Angry that gets you put in jail in the first place). Either way you see if, Thornton is the major star here, delivering the kind of performance that we have come to expect of him, and then some.

The movie starts out with a feel of a serious drama, becomes a comedy of psychoses and of American media glamorization, and finishes off strong. You will not be disappointed, unless you've been lobotomized. But, then, would you care?

I give this movie two shotgun shells up.