Bandits
by Mark Rivers
Jew Barry Levinson directed Bandits, and a few other Jews acted as producers. Normally,
such a movie has an abundance of drooling hillbillies and trailer trash pitted against
strong and heroic negro cop/lawyer/neurosurgeons. Or, hordes of unwashed European rabble
face-to-face with mighty and noble African warrior kings. Or, sinister German soldiers
running the poor, pitiful Jews through a giant meat grinder.
Bandits, however, has only a smattering of negroes in it. The movie takes place mostly in
the mostly White-populated Pacific Northwest (which is why Cops spent more than a
year there; to jack up the number of White criminals featured on that show. But I
digress.). Bruce Willis and Billy Bob Thornton play a pair of jailbirds who, after busting
out of federal prison rather easily, set out on a bank-robbing spree.
Billy Bob is the brains of the operation, and his plan is to kidnap the bank manager the
night before, and have the bank staff commit the robbery for them before the bank opens.
They commit a few robberies, a dizzy dame (Cate Blanchett) shows up and complicates things,
and the robbers wind up performing a fake death scene for the police, who, apparently, have
never seen The Sting (1973). The robbers get away clean, and they all wind up in the
tropical paradise of Mexico.
The main problem with Bandits is that it suffers from terminal predictability. It
was advertised as a wacky comedy, so the serious opening scene, in which the robbers face
their desperate last stand, is pretty obviously going to be a set-up. Our suspicions are
confirmed when, in flashback, we are introduced to their mildly retarded getaway driver, who
happens to know all about making realistic-looking gunshot wounds.
Bandits spends most of its two hours showing us just how fun it is to be a bank robber.
The crooks and their moll shoot off fireworks, have affairs and live the good life. The
authorities are no more than a loose confederation of easily-duped buffoons (that's
refreshing), and the robbers live happily ever after with their stolen loot.
They even justify their crimes in one scene. Bruce Willis' character, when confronted with
the argument that he's stealing from the poor and downtrodden citizens, he argues that,
since the money is federally insured, he's only stealing from the oppressive U.S. government,
the REAL thieves.
Don't bother seeing Bandits. Rent The Sting if you must, but honestly -- don't
you think it's time you started reading a little more? You can find a lot of helpful reading
material at...
www.natall.com
www.natvan.com
MARK RIVERS
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