Two If by Sea (1996)

Directed by Bill Bennett. Starring Denis Leary, Sandra Bullock, Stephen Dillane, Yaphet Kotto, Wayne Robson, Lenny Clarke, Mike Starr, Michael Badalucco, Jonathan Tucker, John Friesen. [R]

Low-rent thief Leary swipes a valuable Matisse painting and hides out from the authorities with girlfriend Bullock at an empty house; they bicker from end to end while FBI agent Kotto closes in, muttering in disbelief that it can’t be this easy to track these morons. Dismal romantic comedy is a bitter pill to swallow, as these characters’ patter is obnoxious with a capital “A” (that’s probably how they’d spell it); cutaways to a quartet of mutton-headed crooks and comatose police work don’t provide relief so much as inflict alternate forms of pain. Throwing a kid (Tucker) and an enormously coincidental late-film twist involving neighbor Dillane into the mix certainly doesn’t help either, so maybe you can get distracted by the look-at-meee camerawork…no, wait, that’s just another way in which this movie manages to be irritating. Kotto’s tired performance doesn’t exactly summon memories of the similar role he played in Midnight Run. Leary also co-wrote the story and screenplay. Released as Stolen Hearts in the UK.

20/100