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'Sunset' quickly fades from memory
Pierce Brosnan and Salma Hayek
Glen Wilson/New Line Cinema
Stars: Pierce Brosnan, Salma Hayek
Director: Brett Ratner
MPAA rating: PG-13 for sexuality, violence, language
Michael Machosky can be reached via e-mail or at 412-320-7901.
There's a third kind of movie out there, though, that might be even worse than a bad movie. And "After the Sunset" is the perfect illustration. It doesn't do anything wrong, really.
"After the Sunset" should push all the right buttons, activating a streamlined, turbocharged entertaining machine. But instead, all you get are some sparks, smoke and a sound like a cold casserole dropped on the floor. It's not that it's a letdown. It's just so tepid, predictable and by-the-numbers that it's hard to remember what happened three minutes after it's over.
The movie begins after the big heist of the second Napoleon Diamond, when two jewel thieves/lovers, Max (Pierce Brosnan) and Lola (Salma Hayek), retire to a Caribbean resort to live out their lives in lazy splendor. Max is getting tired of all the lobster dinners and idle fun. But he perks up when Stan (Woody Harrelson), the FBI agent he has bedeviled for years, shows up to taunt him. And wouldn't you know it, the third Napoleon Diamond just happens to be parked offshore on a cruise ship.
Various cat-and-mouse hijinks ensue. The film expends a lot of energy setting up a gag that makes the two men look gay in front of their girlfriends, which isn't really worth the effort. In fact, nothing really seems worth the effort. Every twist just seems like a hassle, and every payoff is anticlimactic.
Don Cheadle shows up too late as an earnest, entrepreneurial crime boss who loves listening to The Mamas and The Papas, but his arrival just demonstrates how bland and lacking in personality the leads are.
