Jam!Movies 4/25/03: Karen Cliche and Tom McCamus
A petty larceny: Steal has its appeal
By LIZ BRAUN
Technically speaking, Steal is a big fat mess. Some of the acting is fairly horrible, too.
Luckily, this extreme sports/bank job hybrid is so action-packed that you can overlook plenty. Well, maybe not.
Steal begins with a chase -- on roller blades -- that is pure adrenaline, and the film continues to pump out sequences of terrific action, all accompanied by an anxiety-provoking rock score. The heists are clever, quick and clean. The get-aways involve creative physical activity and energetic camera work. So much for the good stuff.
On the negative side, Steal doesn't really have a plot that makes sense. Stephen Dorff stars as the head of the robbery gang, with Cle Bennet, Steven McCarthy and Karen Cliche as his crew. They are young, attractive and gifted thieves. They do not use guns.
After one job, the team discovers they have several millions in bonds that cannot be traced. They're rich! No need to steal again! Then, when it turns out that the bonds belong to mobsters, a pack of bad guys are after our heroes.
(Steven Berkoff, apparently dubbed, but perhaps not dubbed enough, is the lead baddie.)
And then there's another pack of bad guys after our heroes, too, but they turn out to be dirty cops (mostly one dirty cop, played with spectacular awkwardness and overacting by Bruce Payne). The bad cop insists the gang rob again and give him the money. Bummer.
Natasha Henstridge is also in the story as a detective who falls for Dorff's character, even though she sort-of suspects he might be a bank robber. Tom McCamus turns up briefly as a gun-toting creep who perhaps fulfills some Canadian content thingy. We can't be sure.
Anyway, the story is weak, the dialogue is sometimes inadvertently hilarious and a couple of characters seem to have no reason to be in the story. Never mind. Steal has some really fine action sequences and makes perfect sense, we suspect, to the male adolescent for whom it was made.
Did we mention the bare breast scene?
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