catholiclefty

Probably the first rule of a heist movie is that the heist has to be interesting. Stone Of Destiny completely fails that rather basic test, with a heist that is neither remotely exciting nor, despite various farcical elements, remotely amusing. This is a really rather boring film, based on a true story that you can't help feeling was probably a lot more interesting to be involved in than this portrays.

Perhaps you'll get more out of this film if you're a Scottish nationalist, but personally I don't especially care either way, and the casual incidents of anti-Scottish prejudice shown in the film seemed more bizarre and out-of-place - even for the 1950s, a time that admittedly I wasn't actually around for - than unpleasant and injust. I did wonder how you could make an entire film out of some people stealing a piece of stone (ok, admittedly, an important piece of stone) from a cathedral, and the answer is by making it very boring and drawn-out. Some of the incidents seem placed in the film for no reason than to pad the running time - notably the sudden illness and almost as sudden recovery that affects one character. Maybe this happened in real life too - I'm not interested enough to find out for myself - but it just didn't fit in.

Charlie Cox, delightful in Stardust (my review), doesn't appeal at all here. His character tries to have a vaguely hard edge and fails. Billy Boyd too isn't exactly wonderful, though I can't be the only person who can't see him without thinking of a hobbit, which admittedly doesn't help me fairly assess his performance, though I still feel justified in saying there was quite a lot lacking. The best performances of the film are Kate Mara - who gives a decent performance with a character who doesn't quite go down the tediously obvious love-interest route, but still needed more of something else to do - and, almost inevitably, Robert Carlyle, who acts the off-form Charlie Cox off the screen in his all-too-brief scenes.

The period looks ok, and a few scenes work, but this really isn't an interesting film in the slightest, and the acting and script both leave quite a lot to be desired. 4.5 out of 10.

A slight but reasonably amusing little film, A Bunch Of Amateurs feels more like a gentle TV show padded to movie length - which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does make one question the necessity of going to the cinema to see the thing. There's nothing groundbreaking here, and you need a reasonable amount of suspension of disbelief that the initial setup propagates through to sustain the rest of the film (rather than the more likely 'look, I was tricked into coming here, I'm leaving'). There are some nice digs at the acting profession, and I do like films that employ the creation of other dramatic arts (Shakespeare in Love being the obvious example. This is also Shakespeare, but King Lear, and not remotely as inventive as SiL). There's also some weird and unsuccessful diversions (notably an agent committing suicide in a 'hilarious' way), but the solution to the problem being 'deceiving the tabloid newspapers out of lots of money' is a pretty satisfying resolution. There's a bit of family stuff that doesn't intrude too much, and despite the script trying to be clever and draw parallels with King Lear it doesn't work all that well, but never mind.

Burt Reynolds is decent enough to send himself up, and for the most part doesn't do a bad job, though there are a few weak points in the first half hour. Derek Jacobi is perfectly cast as the pompous actor who thinks he should have the lead parts. Imelda Staunton's part is a bit haphazard but she gives a reasonable performance with it. There are various other people - probably a few too many - giving performances of varying quality.

This isn't a bad film, but it doesn't aspire to greatness and doesn't inadvertently achieve it anyway. 5.5 out of 10.