After the Sunset

In this caper movie from director Brett Ratner, two brilliant criminals are lured out of retirement...or are they? Max Burdett (Pierce Brosnan) is a master jewel thief who, with the help of his accomplice and lover Lola Cirillo (Salma Hayek), has stolen two of the three Napoleon diamonds, among the most valuable gems on Earth. Stanley Lloyd (Woody Harrelson) is an FBI agent who has been on Burdett's trail for years and is especially eager to bring him to justice after a humiliating incident in which Max swiped one of the Napoleons out from under Stanley's nose. But word has it that Max and Lola have abandoned their lives of crime, and they've taken up residence on an idyllic island in the Bahamas, where they're living the good life on their ill-gotten fortune. Lloyd is not convinced they're out of the game for good, and when he learns that the third Napoleon diamond will be on display aboard a cruise ship headed in Max's direction, Lloyd joins forces with Sophie (Naomie Harris), a Paradise Island police detective, to catch Max and Lola red handed. Henry Moore (Don Cheadle), an expatriate American gangster who also lives on the island, doesn't believe Max has gone straight either and tries to rope him into stealing the jewel for him.

AMG Review: The role of the suave thief is a walk in the park -- or maybe on the beach -- for Pierce Brosnan. That's exactly how he plays it in After the Sunset, oozing certitude as his wispy island shirts flap in the breeze. Factor in the tropical setting, the eventual companionship of the central adversaries, and the "I'll hoodwink you now you hoodwink me" plot, and it's not substantially different from another midlevel Brosnan caper flick, The Thomas Crown Affair. The films diverge mostly in tone, as John McTiernan is an action director, while Sunset director Brett Ratner favors buddy comedy. That may explain why Sunset doesn't take itself very seriously, forsaking violence and heist footage in favor of a goofy camaraderie between Brosnan and Woody Harrelson, which Ratner brings front and center. As the hunter and hunted get mistaken for gay lovers on a fishing trip and counsel each other on women troubles, After the Sunset glides along a light and likeable path, if only because Craig Rosenberg and Paul Zbyszewksi's script seems content to avoid yet another white-knuckle exercise in breaching high-tech security. Unfortunately, things snap back into the cookie cutter just in time for an ending pretty typical of these Elmore Leonard-style whimsical crime capers. Casting Don Cheadle helps call to mind the pillars of the genre (Ocean's Eleven, Out of Sight), while Salma Hayek's primary narrative function seems to be modeling bikinis and other skimpy outfits.