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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
BANKER'S HOURS, November 22, 2005
It's always nice to see Kim Basinger. A lovely woman and a competent actress, it is her presence that makes THE REAL MCCOY a tolerable bank heist yarn. Basinger plays a slick bank robber who gets out on parole after serving six years of a ten year sentence. Her smarmy husband (an obnoxious Nick Searcy) has told their young son that his mother is dead, but Basinger is determined to have some kind of relationship with the boy. She hooks up with Val Kilmer who plays a fan of hers and who also entices her to do a bank heist for creepy Terence Stamp. Seems that Stamp is the culprit responsible for Basinger's imprisonment, so she doesn't want to have anything to do with him. But Stamp has other plans and kidnaps the son to force her to do the heist. Basinger does well with the conflicting maternal instincts, telling young Patrick that she is a friend of his deceased mommy. The heist itself is staged well by director Russell Mulcahy, but the end result is fairly obvious and even though Basinger has plans of her own, we find ourselves hoping she, Kilmer and the boy come out on top.
Mindless entertainment, but certainly not a dog.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A mediocre film which at times is entertaining, May 11, 2003
Kim Basinger plays Karen McCoy, a solo bank robber who gets caught one night while 'on the job'. After six years she's out on parole and rushes to see her beloved son, Patrick (Zach English). Much to her dismay and anger, she finds out that not only had her ex-husband Roy (Nick Searcy) been burning her letters to her son, he also told Patrick that his mother was dead! Karen must now work to make her life 'straight' as she tries to get custody to see her kid. But things start to get worse when former boss and gangster Jack Schmidt (Terrence Stamp) kidnaps her son and blackmails her to do one last bank heist. With the help of rookie criminal J.T. Barker (Val Kilmer), Karen must make sure she can get her son and herself out of this mess alive.
The idea is good, the cast is good, it's such a shame that "The Real McCoy" turns out to be a mediocre film floundering in a badly written script. Once again, I will say that the whole idea behind the movie is great, what if a ex-bank robber is blackmailed and must pull the most elaborate and difficult bank robbery? Unfortunately, whoever wrote the script had either no clue how to fill out the story or was in a rush to get it finished. The movie begins with Karen getting caught then we are brought to six years after the event. The next 40 minutes are dull as we are dragged through events that really didn't have to happen. Finally though, after trudging through the first 50 minutes, we get to see some action. The bank robbery is well done and loads of fun, up there with the first "Mission Impossible" movie. But after the climax bank heist, the ending feels a bit cut short. In my opinion, the first 40 minutes could have been compressed into half the time, then lengthened the ending by adding some more twists and turns.Then we have the acting. Some of the reviewers complained about Kim Basinger. All I can say is that I feel very bad for her. I bet her character was really hard to act out since the director/writer duo couldn't seem to make up what kind of person they wanted! Did they want a frail woman to be pitied upon because of her constant clashes with overbearing males? Or did they want a strong woman with plenty of smarts to be able to be an expert robber? Karen McCoy has too many mixed up personalities to be able to really like, though Kim Basinger at times gives a good performance. Terrence Stamp is just completely wasted on, there's nothing special about his bad-guy role. On the good side, we have the young and talented actor Val Kilmer as Karen's sidekick. I've always thought of him as a very versatile actor, I mean he's acted out so many different roles (a spy in "The Saint", a superhero in "Batman Forever", a warrior in "Willow", a legend in "Tombstone", etc.). Seeing him play J.T. Barker was a lot fun, backwards baseball cap, Southern accent, and all! He got all the best lines in the film and played his role with the greatest of ease. It's too bad we didn't get to see more of him. There are some great action scenes, including of course the climax bank heist. Val Kilmer gets to drive a VERY cool car (can't really see if it's a Camarro or a Firebird since they were very similar looking cars). Though it's kind of weird to hear screeching tires in the pouring rain, for car lovers it's absolutely wonderful to hear the car's nice engine! So, here's a summary: It's too bad the script couldn't have been worked out better since we have three such great stars acting in the movie. But if you are a Val Kilmer, Kim Basinger, or Terrence Stamp fan and loves a good caper, check this film out.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
there was only man for the job: a woman, August 8, 2001
Director Russell Mulcahy's action heist doesn't reveal as much bank theft hardware as Jon Amiel's 1999 Entrapment, nor allows for the star power that Catherine Zeta-Jones and Sean Connery provided for the later film. As the protagonist, a reknown bank robber out on parole after 6 years in a Georgia jail (which allows for her accent) and blackmailed into doing another bank, Kim Basinger is limited by the genre's stereotype of a woman in an action movie and the mysogynistic screenplay by William Davies and William Osborne. We know things are off when Mulcahy doesn't give Basinger the coverage to confirm the Who is That? response of Val Kilmer as someone vaguely connected to her parole officer and a rookie criminal. Basinger's self-conscious beauty is seen to attract constant sexual harassment by men far less appealing than her - just note the repeated "you've kept your figure" observation - but then Mulcahy has a queasy scene where she is beaten and offers no self defence when she has already demonstrated she possesses some skill in that area. Why? Does Basinger being so beautiful mean she must pay for it? When she is first released from prison a man comes on to her on a train, but he is inexplicably repelled when she tells him she robs bank. There is also an implication that she is a bad mother for abandoning her child in favour of a life of crime. We're never told why she started robbing banks, though considering what her ex-husband is like, it may have been just to get away from her life with him, if you can believe she would have ever been interested in him in the first place. Mulcahy doesn't have the comic skill to give Basinger in a black wig any payoff (though Basinger in a black wig is still recognisably Kim), and he even scores points off her by having her not wear gloves when she breaks into someone's house. We get the hackneyed stalled car when the driver is in pursuit, rain during the bank heist, and a very MTV image of someone pouring a bottle of water over their face, which can only be partly contextualised by the apparent heat of the vault drilling and the matching sweat on Basinger's face. Mulcahy cleverly provides cross cuts to security police racing to the bank during the heist to create suspense, since the mechanics of the heist itself are lacking in detail, but Kilmer's timing of the security route from their base to the bank is merely an excuse for an extended stunt driving sequence. Kilmer doesn't make much of an impression here, and doesn't even get to touch Basinger, but Terence Stamp as the head of the bad guys gets a good yell in closeup.
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