One of the wrost movies I have ever seen

It is a performances centric movie

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Takes place in England. Shannon (Minnie Driver) is a nurse who evicts her boyfriend because he pays her no attention, even on her birthday. He is instead infatuated with electronic eavesdropping on other people's wireless conversations from which he collects snippets for some kind of artistic project he has in mind. Frances (Mary McCormack), Shannon's best friend, is a struggling actor with a talent for changing her voice and accent. One of my favorite scene has Frances repeating a line for a cartoon using different voices and styles at the behest of the director. Fooling around with audio equipment of Shannon's boyfriend after getting drunk, they hear burglars in the act of robbing a bank on Shannon's street. They know it is on Shannon's street because they her a police car out there window at the same time they her the burglars discussing it. They go to the police while the robbery is in progress, but the harried officer on the desk treats them as a couple of nuts. The next day, when they hear newscast reports of the burglary, rather than going to the police again they decide to blackmail the crooks, based on names and a phone number they overheard, for a portion of the loot. The crooks turn out to be part of a sophisticated gang. The story continues with the girls clumsily trying to get a money "drop" from the burglars, and the burglars trying to find and eliminate whoever has been contacting them about the burglary. Minnie Driver looks very cute, the acting is fine, and the film is fun to watch. However, the plot has major problems that require the girls to do things that are stupider then the girls appear to be, such as not going to the police again once they learn how dangerous the bad guys are. At one time the crooks are in a gun battle with the girls, who are using an arsenal of fully automatic weapons they stole from the crooks. The girls have the bad guys totally out gunned, but Shannon insists that Frances give her a chance to use an assault rifle, which she has never used and turns out can't control. That childish behavior is not consistent with her character. SPOILER - The film never explains how Frances was not shot when Shannon repeatedly shoots her with one of the bad guy's weapon. Nor does it explain how Shannon, who is acting dead in the same room as the other players, somehow steals a large arsenal from the crook's weapons storage and gets outside behind a hedge before the others exit. It also isn't explicit about what happens to Kerrigan, the "Don" of the gang, at the end. It also doesn't explain why the police stop looking for the two attractive girls who reported the crime while it was in progress. - SPOILERI would have rated it higher if not for all those goofs, because I did find it enjoyable.

The direction from Mel Smith is pedestrian at best, and the plot falls between two stools, being neither farcical nor plausible. Rather than being swept up in events, the female protagonists doggedly pursue a reckless course of action without adequate motivation. The cartoon violence, in which despite hails of bullets no-one actually gets killed, contributes to the lack of edge. We never really care about the heroines, because we never feel they are actually in any danger. A further problem is Mary McCormack, who just does not have the comic chops to carry off the demands placed on her. One would have hoped in any case that British cinema had got beyond the point of importing Hollywood C-listers in the forlorn hope of sales across the Pond. It might have been interesting to see what a talented British comedienne, such as Jane Horrocks or Sally Phillips, could have done with the role. The jolie laide Minnie Driver puts in an acceptable performance in a less demanding role, without doing anything to suggest that a career in comedy lies before her. Michael Gambon lends some much needed menace as a camp East End gangster, and Kevin McNally and Len Collin astutely play it straight as the heavies, but for laughs the film relies on the comic coppers, Mark Williams, as the acerbic inspector, and Kevin Eldon as his property price obsessed sergeant. Other familiar Brit faces, such as Hugh Bonneville, Paul Bown and Julian Wadham, do the best they can with blink-and-you'll-miss-them cameos. It is harmless enough way to pass an hour and a half, and will raise the occasional smile, but you will find yourself easily distracted.

This movie starts out unremarkable, but it gets better, so stick with it. It is alternately silly (mostly in the first and last 15 minutes) and edgy (in the middle), but if you can ignore the various implausibilities (why would such a well-organized and highly professional team of robbers have such a moron as their lookout in the first place?) it's fun, with engaging performances particularly by Minnie Driver and Kevin McNally (who does the right thing by playing his role straight). In any case, it is much better than the very similar and mean-spirited "Beautiful Creatures" from the same year. (**1/2)

I saw this movie in Blockbuster and wasn't sure enough ... vague blurbs ... to rent it. I caught it on cable, and I enjoyed it. The movie as you know is about a pair of women (one an American) with blah lives who find out about a robbery and decide to blackmail to crooks (slags?) to get some of the loot. The comparision to "Snatch" is somewhat legitimate because it doesn't take itself seriously, each character is played to comic effect, and it has its violent moments. All the same, it isn't as violent or profane as some "Snatch" type movies ... it restrains itself, and that's good ... the lightness of the movie makes it enjoyable fare. The leads, including Minnie Driver in a nice role, are good ... as is on the whole the writing and all that other stuff. Nice English effort. You might not like this sort of thing ... it's not rocket science ... but I don't know why anyone would call it "horrible," either.