It's hard to make a great caper film. It's not that the genre is so hard to make. It's that it's such a seasonal flavor. Caper films appeal to the little devil in all of us, particularly after we've clocked in our forty-plus hours working for the man. We all know our role, as the faceless mob of worker bees, is a slow-moving shaft that we finally begin to feel - right about the time that doctor tells us to bend over and sing Moon River.

Henry David Thoreau famously wrote that "The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation." The closer I get to forty, the more I wonder why somebody hasn't canonized Thoreau by now. Ah - I know why. Because his message is so depressing. A few of us live life on the edge - either as billionaires or as pictures on the post-office wall. The rest of us have traded in the pleasures of opportunity for the duller, but persuasive, virtues of security.

Then midlife hits - and all bets are off. Faster than you can say, Lester Burnham, men are sleeping with the sitter, buying convertibles and reading books about why it's smarter to leave your kids absolutely nothing when you die.

Short of that, there's always Atlantic City, Las Vegas, those seminars about buying real estate "with no money down," the old Cayman Island tax dodge - and caper films.

Caper films let us see that little devil inside of us get away with all those little sins we'd have committed long ago if only we had the brains to program a VCR. Even Bill Gates and Martha Stewart - the robber barons that they are - have forced an ounce of admiration out of everyone except the Justice Department and the SEC - because THOSE people CAN program their VCRs - and rob, steal and smile like Hollywood stars.

The problem with caper films is that they generate a kind of "land office" business that quickly encourages every production company in California to release their version of the caper film. And then, suddenly, the field is crowded with wannabe rogues, and the fun gives way to repetition and boredom.

If you're not careful, you could be the producer, director or audience member running to the beach "after the sunset" of caper hysteria. In a way, that's what happened here. After the Sunset comes on the scene well after a slew of other caper films had already soaked up so much of the public's appetite for this genre.

Let's take a trip down memory lane. Without going in chronological order, think of the last half-dozen caper films in recent memory.

Times up.

Here's my list: Matchstick Men, Ocean's Eleven, Confidence, The Score, The Big Bounce, Heist, The Italian Job, The Limey, The Good Thief - you get the picture.

It's hard to step into a genre that has raced well past birth and middle-age and is heading straight for, well, the sunset. After the Sunset tries to do this by coming up with what it thinks is the freshest angle: a diamond thief going through a midlife crisis. He wants to retire -and in fact, his girlfriend/accomplice wants nothing less -but fate has other plans. An old FBI agent, looking to settle old scores, has settled in, hoping to find new evidence against him. And his arrival coincides with the stopover of a cruise ship containing a legendary Napoleonic diamond worth some thirty million dollars.

These new developments create the kinds of dramatic ripples you'd expect to find in a soap opera. Will the G-man find new evidence against our anti-hero? Has our anti-hero been candid with his lover - or was their premarital getaway just preparation for the perfect caper?

What ensues is not really a caper film. Caper films are about people with deep-seated needs to do sneaky things to get the kinds of goodies (and excitement) the rest of wish we were smart enough to snatch. After the Sunset is more of a situation comedy, set in a Caribbean vacationland, involving characters derived from other, better, caper films.

Not surprisingly, a lot of reviews have dissed this film as lame, dreary, lacking in excitement, et cetera. I don't want to go there. Knocking this film would be just too easy - even when there is much in this film that made people around me laugh and cry.

If anything, After the Sunset might be called a woman's caper film - which is something of an oxymoron. It's not that women don't steal. It's that fantasies about breaking into safes, crawling through oversized air ducts and lurking about in the dark is the kind of stuff that tends to skew toward a predominantly male audience.

This film, like so many other caper films, focuses on yet another guy. Ironically, if he were more of a grifter, we'd probably have different expectations. Somehow, lying and five-fingering on an up-close-and-personal basis is something we half expect from women, but when it comes to breaking and entering, we want a guy. Lesson? If theft involves some form of construction work, look for men. That's their thing.

That said, After the Sunset skews differently. It doesn't skew the young, impulsive male in his late teens, twenties or early thirties. It skews older males and women. Though Pierce Brosnan stars as the thief with the midlife crisis, there is as much conflict between him and his lover, Salma Hayek, as there is between himself and the indefatigable G-man, Woody Harrelson. Here, the real gem is not the diamond on the boat. It's the woman who has risked so much to stand by her man.

And it's the danger of losing that woman that creates real problems for the Brosnan character.

I'd like to say more, but some of you might actually want to see this film, which delighted a lot of older people and couples around me. I found the sit-com humor a bit tame, but they sure didn't. They roared with laughter at jokes I saw coming a mile away.

My favorite part of this film - believe it or not - was the photography. I wasn't overly impressed with Brett Ratner's direction, but I was delighted with the cinematography of Dante Spinotti, as well as the underwater shots of Peter Zuccarini. The photography in this film is so lush, it goes a long way toward making up for the lackluster story line, which seems like a muddied rehash of The Thomas Crown Affair - which was also about a thief coming under scrutiny by an investigator, and whose love life was endangered by his choice of professions. The difference between this film and that is simply one of casting. In The Thomas Crown Affair, both lover and investigator were the same person. Here, the roles have been bifurcated into a dorky investigator and a hottie lover.

Some have bemoaned a first-scene techno-trick of highly dubious plausibility. My gripe is with the last scene of the film, which snatches away the resolution of several interpersonal conflicts in an effort to end it all with one big joke. People laughed, but I couldn't help but grimace at the cost of the joke. For me, it was yet another detail undermining the plot by reducing it all to sit-com-like absurdity.

Bottom line: After the Sunset is a mildly enjoyable sitcom about a diamond thief whose retirement is more grueling than his career. It's undeniably funny in spots, filled with lush photography and peppered with a few surprises. If you're looking for a date film, this one would work. If you're looking for a caper film, look somewhere else. The caper aspects of this film are so lame, they make day jobs look exciting.

Recommended: No