Major disappointment. Past fans of director Bill Forsyth (Local Hero, Comfort and Joy, Housekeeping), and not of writer and usually director John Sayles, will have the option of attempting to lay the blame on the latter. (Past fans of both of them seem to have no other option than to pretend the movie is a total delight.) The premise of an aging, gimpy, and myopic safecracker taking on an endlessly naive but enthusiastic apprentice is at bottom another example of mistaken faith in the infinite flexibility of the Odd Couple idea, a flexibility presumed to stretch beyond the merely odd and all the way to the inexplicable. And the crime field in particular is not just infertile ground for Forsyth's benign and gentle humor (cf. his early misfire, That Sinking Feeling), but too heavily trampled a ground already. His famous eye, meanwhile, has a few chances, but only a few, to boggle at the dismal surroundings: the low-flying air traffic over the thief's bungalow; the squeakily mobile sculptures that serve as his "cover"; the literally fruity décor at the site of his supermarket caper. Even at those times, as well as at all others, the photography of Michael Coulter is unenhancingly dingy. With Burt Reynolds and Casey Siemaszko. (1989) — Duncan Shepherd
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