It is OK to rob a bank if you limit your booty to $100,000. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation insures banks for up to that much — so bank robbers can now be modern day Robin Hoods, lovable right down to their mercenary hearts.

Hence the lovability of Terry (Billy Bob Thornton) and Joe (Bruce Willis) in the new movie Bandits, a hyped-up Hollywood flick about bank robbers with hearts of gold and personal issues. Terry is a hypochondriac (and the best part of the movie) mumbling about all of his imagined diseases and phobias as his partner Joe plays the swaggering bad-boy womanizer.

Bandits starts out looking grim. Terry and Joe find themselves in a pretty tight spot — the Alamo is surrounded (it's a bank); they aren't facing down angry Mexicans, but eager television crews and law enforcement with them in perfect sight of cameras and guns. Needless to say, it does not look good for Terry and Joe freedom-wise. The rest of the movie is flashbacks telling how they lead up to that crucial point.

After an impromptu jailbreak in the beginning, Terry and Joe become the Sleepover Bandits, bank robbers with a little ingenuity. Their gimmick is keeping the bank manager and their family hostage the night before a robbery, then having the manager escort them—real proper-like—to the bank the next morning for a scheduled robbery. This routine might become mundane if not for Kate (Cate Blanchett), a depressed and disillusioned housewife with a thing for Bonnie Tyler music, along for the ride with America's two most famous criminals.

Inevitably first Joe then Terry falls for the irresistible Kate. What is odd is that she returns the affection (for them both). Terry and Joe really don't fall into the same guy category, Joe likes to live life to the extreme while Terry would prefer to retreat into a safe cocoon to ponder his many infirmities. But according to Kate, together they "make up the perfect man."

The escapades and romance of this neurotic trio are amusing and fun to watch, but they leave one tense for what seems the inevitable tragic end. Never fear though, the ending is the best part. A surprise that I can't bring myself to ruin for you — go see it for a laugh.

— Reviewed by Emily Morris