Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

It took me a few minutes to figure out what was going on. The movie starts with one of those crime-story shows about a group of bank robbers who have come to be known as the Sleepover Bandits. (More on that later.) The next scene is of two of the soon-to-be bank robbers (Bruce Willis and Billy Bob Thornton) breaking out of jail. We quickly learn that Terry (Thornton’s character) is a hypochondriac with many other problems and that Joe (Willis’s character) tends towards the macho and impulsive.

When Terry says that they need cash, Joe decides that he’s going to rob a bank with a highlighter from a stolen car. After the heist, Terry does some thinking. He realizes that there was too much risk involved in their robbery. If they can minimize their risk, they can be in and out easily and have as few witnesses as possible. The only way to do this is to find the bank manager and take him or her hostage. The manager will then open the vault for them first thing in the morning. They even bring in Joe’s rather stupid cousin, Phil (Anthony Burch), to be their front man. (That’s the guy that drives getaway and makes all the preparations.) What they don’t count on is meeting Kate, a very depressed and bored housewife played by Cate Blanchett. She adds quite a bit of tension and conflict between Joe and Terry.

I don’t recall there being more than about a half dozen bank robberies. Those robberies account for a small part of the movie. What we get to see a lot of is how they manage to screw up. Terry runs out of gas and has to leave his car when he realizes that the police have found it. Phil, in an attempt to meet this hitchhiker, nearly gets them caught. There’s also plenty of character development as Terry, Joe, Kate, and Phil wait for their next robbery.

The trouble with the movie is that the four main characters can seem to be exaggerated at times. Phil seems too stupid to be involved in any serious robbery attempt. Terry’s imagined health problems become a gag at one point. Even Kate’s husband is too clueless to his own insensitivity to really be taken seriously.

Also, we’re told very early in the movie that Terry and Joe die. It kind of kills the suspense. Even if something drastically different is going to happen, you’re sitting there the entire movie wondering how it’s going to happen. As strange as they were, I certainly didn’t want them to die.

I just want to mention one last thing that bothered me before I end this review. What happened to the money? I Some of it gets spent, some of it lost. It seemed as though they saved the majority of it, but I don’t recall any of them saying, “Oh, I left the money back in the motel room.” Granted, it’s a minor detail, but there were enough of those to make it a strange movie. The scary part is that it might just work.



Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age