The movie is really good looking with a great visual style, that makes this a great genre movie to watch. But the movie has such an incredibly bad story and storytelling that the movie still manages to almost become unwatchable at times.

Not only just the story is simple and formulaic, it also is told in about the worst way possible. The story never flows well, which is probably also due to some bad editing. Seems like director Gérard Pirès only concentrated on the style and action of the movie and not on its story at all. Definitely a case of style over substance.

The story features lots of clichés and some highly unlikely moments, even for action movie standards and the movie also doesn't exactly become much better as the movie develops. The movie even gets truly ridicules at times. Too bad because with its style and cast involved, the movie really showed some potential.

The movie really has a great cast. Stephen Dorff is a great actor and he also even shows that in this movie. Bruce Payne goes way too much over-the-top with his role, which causes him to be an unlikely and not likable enough villain. Steven Berkoff is way better, in an also over-the-top but very fun role, as a Southern villain, with an Elvis-wig. It's a role you normally wouldn't expect from him. And thank goodness that Natasha Henstridge's role is smaller than she is credited with.

The action is fair enough. Definitely no big-budget kind of stuff but obviously also way better than the average B-action movie. The movie provides a couple of thrills and kicks. Some of the special effects are a bit too fake looking at times unfortunately.

A fair enough enjoyable guilty-pleasure to watch but don't forget to switch off your brain first.

5/10

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In order to enjoy STEAL (As it's known in the UK ) there's several things you must do

1 ) Switch off your brain

2 ) Develop an interest in extreme sports

3 ) Be aged between twelve and seventeen

I have a problem with all of the above especially the third one which meant I couldn't enjoy this movie and I'm sure anyone not in the aforementioned age bracket will have a problem with this movie which can be best described as " MTV Xtreme Sports Meets THE A-TEAM "

Everything about this movie is geared towards the cool visuals which means the editing and cinematography and stunts are excellent to the detriment of everything else , it's almost like a recruiting advert for bank robbery done in a comic book manner with no characterisation , minimalist dialogue and some atrocious acting

The cast ? OMG the cast . You know when you watch a Hollywood movie and it's the Brits who give the best performances ? Well here it's the other way round with Bruce Payne and Steven Berkoff heads and shoulders below everybody else . Berkoff especially is stand out in his awfulness and considering the poor performances all round he should be ashamed of himself , it's amazing this guy is still allowed an Equity card

The whole screenplay is written around the spectacular set pieces and to be fair the editing and cinematography do make them spectacular but there's too much gaps in logic involved which makes an unlikely story even more dumb . Without giving too much away one heist involves a freelancer getting very naughty which means the team ( Who are portrayed as being self righteously opposed to killing ) leave this guy to his fate by escaping but they do so in a ridiculous manner which meant if the goon had behaved himself they would still have left him via this method . What sort of morality is this ? Did the writers think no one would have noticed ?

Not really worth your time watching except for the stunts or unless you're addicted to the MTV channels

Just watched this film the other day on BBC. The write-up in the paper said something like: "a group of extreme sports-people undertake a series of heists". I immediately though that this sounded like film-making by committee. Someone thought it would be a pretty good idea to stick a load of "totally wack" young "X-treme" sports-people into a film with explosions and stuff. Unfortunately someone then has to find a way of linking the inevitable bungee jumps and climbing shenanigans with a plot, script and characters.

Oops.

This film is completely and utterly stupid. The characters make absolutely no sense, are complete clichés, and are bound by a really funny script.... At times it feels like a spoof, though unfortunately I think we are actually supposed to take it seriously.

If you are a connoisseur of really bad, cheesy films, you won't be disappointed by this.

My highlight has to be Stephen Berkoff, whose accent is hilariously erratic.