'The Real McCoy' is a heist movie in which the heroine can work her way into and out of the most complicated of security devices but strangely enough can't seem to get out of a tired, predictable cliché-ridden script.
It stars Kim Basinger as a burglar so good at her job that she has become famous as The Real McCoy. We meet her coming out of a six year prison term after being set up by Schmidt (Terence Stamp) one of those irritating movie villains who lives in a mansion and exists in the movie only to issue an ultimatum to the hero.
Turns out that Schmidt was the one who set her up, after helping her to break into a bank and trapping her inside. He and her parole officer devise a little scheme to kidnap her son and hold him hostage until she pulls a major bank job for them. And yes, like countless career criminals in the movies, she wants to go straight.
Here's where the movie loses me: The bank that Schmidt wants her to break into is the same bank that he trapped her in six years ago. Why did he go to the trouble of double-crossing her in the first place? Because the screenwriter doesn't think that the audience is smart enough to ask that question.
The biggest disappointment to me is the bank vault itself, which is of course peanuts to this professional. I am always dazzled by overwrought security measures taken in the movies. Look at the 150+ floors and 9 security doors that Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta Jones had to go through to get into the bank vault in 'Entrapment'. Or look at the security gates, the basement dwelling and the thick wall of plexiglass that held Hannibal Lecter in 'The Silence of the Lambs'. The vault in this movie by comparison is a big yawn.
Oh, and Val Kilmer shows up to befriend Basinger mostly because the filmmakers don't trust her to be the sole hero in a caper movie. Everyone in this movie right down to the kidnapped son is a chess piece set in place and then used as ordered by the rules of caper movie conventions.
It stars Kim Basinger as a burglar so good at her job that she has become famous as The Real McCoy. We meet her coming out of a six year prison term after being set up by Schmidt (Terence Stamp) one of those irritating movie villains who lives in a mansion and exists in the movie only to issue an ultimatum to the hero.
Turns out that Schmidt was the one who set her up, after helping her to break into a bank and trapping her inside. He and her parole officer devise a little scheme to kidnap her son and hold him hostage until she pulls a major bank job for them. And yes, like countless career criminals in the movies, she wants to go straight.
Here's where the movie loses me: The bank that Schmidt wants her to break into is the same bank that he trapped her in six years ago. Why did he go to the trouble of double-crossing her in the first place? Because the screenwriter doesn't think that the audience is smart enough to ask that question.
The biggest disappointment to me is the bank vault itself, which is of course peanuts to this professional. I am always dazzled by overwrought security measures taken in the movies. Look at the 150+ floors and 9 security doors that Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta Jones had to go through to get into the bank vault in 'Entrapment'. Or look at the security gates, the basement dwelling and the thick wall of plexiglass that held Hannibal Lecter in 'The Silence of the Lambs'. The vault in this movie by comparison is a big yawn.
Oh, and Val Kilmer shows up to befriend Basinger mostly because the filmmakers don't trust her to be the sole hero in a caper movie. Everyone in this movie right down to the kidnapped son is a chess piece set in place and then used as ordered by the rules of caper movie conventions.