Disorganized Crime

Jim Kouf, the writer of Stakeout, scripted and directed this shaky heist film, which is a comic variant on The Asphalt Jungle and its numerous successors. Four crooks (Lou Diamond Phillips, Ruben Blades, Fred Gwynn, and William Russ) are summoned to Montana by a criminal mastermind (Corbin Bernsen) to pull off a bank robbery, but their leader gets arrested by two New Jersey cops, obliging his four recruits to fend for themselves. There’s a great deal of bungling on everybody’s partcops, crooks, criminal mastermind (after he breaks away), and also, alas, the filmmakers, who never manage to give this the right amount of snap and periodically fall back on stale scatological jokes and silly plot contrivances. Apart from a nice use of Montana locations, this is strictly routine. (JR)

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