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After the Sunset
Story: A diamond thief couple try to retire on a Caribbean island but are pursued by the FBI officer who has been chasing them for their whole career. Running Time: 1hr 40 minutes. Certificate 12A.
The first thing you need to know - this is NOT James Bond! It's hard to see Pierce Brosnan nowadays without thinking Bond first - and this is probably why he got the part in the first place - but After the Sunset is most definitely a very different kettle of onions. Think of it as a lightweight comedy heist movie and you'll be on the right lines. "Lightweight" is the key word here, as nothing that happens is particularly believable, so remember to power off your brain before settling down with the popcorn.
I enjoyed this film: I think the average moviegoer will enjoy it: Testosterone Satisfaction Rating: Diamond thievery and Salma Hayek's huge cleavage, all pretty innocent. To enjoy this film you should: suspend the critical faculty and treat it as nonsense.
To pre-order After the Sunset for its release on 21st March 2005, use the link below: |
Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Woody Harrelson, Salma Hayek, Naomie Harris, Don Cheadle. Directed by Brett Ratner.
Of all the cast members, Woody Harrelson's FBI agent has to be the most watchable. Ever since
Cheers, he has suited the likeable underdog role and he generates pretty much all of the humour
in After the Sunset. 51 year-old Pierce Brosnan does exactly what is asked of him - though I can't help
thinking that for an Irishman, his accent is more than a little schizophrenic. English, Irish - pick one
and stick with it please. If the script had followed the accent, we would have had lines like
"Now if you'd be so kind, my good man, oi need a shoite, so feck orff." Salma Hayek, it would appear,
could have spoken in martian and still got the part of Brosnan's fiancee, as the camera is far more
interested in her cleavage than any narrative contribution her character may have had to make -
not that there is any (or was I just concentrating elsewhere...?) Don Cheadle and Naomie Harris
complete the significant cast in fine style as the local bigwig and police officer respectively.
Chris Penn (Sean's brother) is mentioned in the opening credits, though he must have less than a
minute of screen time.
Maybe they just wanted that famous surname to appear - hoping that the Penn would be mightier tha...
sorry, I shan't insult you by completing that sentence...
So what about the plot? Well, I'm ambivalent about this. There was a plot, and it
was quite intriguing and we were left guessing until the very end. However, none of the actual plot
elements were portrayed in enough detail to make us believe in them - we are left asking how these
feats were achieved and the absence of the answers leaves a big dent in the overall magic. For example -
and this is in the trailer so I'm not giving much away - at the beginning of the movie, Pierce steals
an FBI car by remote control - a stunning tactic which we are expected to believe was achieved by
running some kind of transmitter a few times across the windscreen. Two other FBI cars give chase
and pitch the remotely controlled car into a spin, whereupon a truck pushes it into their pre-arranged
hiding place. The chasing cars, which you would expect would have stopped or turned around immediately,
suddenly vanish and miraculously don't see this happen. Because it's very early in the movie, the viewer
hasn't latched onto the skimpiness of the proceedings yet, so we are left confused, wondering whether
the chasers were actually in on the plan. They weren't, of course, but they never tell us that - we just
realise eventually after a few more instances of this kind of lax presentation.
Once in the right frame of mind, After the Sunset improves significantly.
The locations are pretty, the script is fun and there are a few small laughs to be had within Pierce Brosnan
and Woody Harrelson's implausible but entertaining relationship. The screen time is divided neatly between
advancing the plot and developing the characters, so the viewer isn't tempted to drift off and compose a mental
top 10 of Bond villains, and the film's 100 minutes pass pleasantly and quickly. It strikes me that After the
Sunset is probably an attempt to make a heist movie accessible to both men and women - much like Ocean's Eleven.
If you're a woman reading this, you can score some points by suggesting you go with your boyfriend to see it -
he will think that it's a blokes' film and that you are doing him a favour, when in actual fact you'll probably
enjoy it more than he does.
And he'll be relieved because he was expecting you to suggest Bridget Jones.
