Plunkett & Macleane

Trainspotting pals Robert Carlyle and Jonny Lee Miller reteam as stick-up artists routing the streets of 18th-century England. Loosely based on historical characters, Plunkett & Macleane is less a period piece than it is a buddy film about unlikely partners from opposite sides of the tracks. Plunkett (Carlyle) is an impoverished apothecary who's lost his wife and longs for a life in America. Macleane (Miller) is a financially fallen aristocrat with a taste for women and the high life. A botched robbery-turned-jailbreak throws the two men together: after buying their way out of jail -- by shitting a ruby -- the two join forces, employing Miller's social connections and Plunkett's gritty knack for thievery to hijack wealth from the rich. Their derring-do gets them a romanticized notoriety, along the lines of Bonnie and Clyde, and with it the wrath of authority.

Jake Scott's film looks fantastic (it's obviously been influenced by Jake's father, Ridley, the visual genius who gave us Alien and Blade Runner), but its tempo and texture are disconcerting -- think Merchant Ivory thrown into an MTV blender. The soundtrack is a strange yet alluring mix that toggles irreverently between chamber music and contemporary techno-rave. And the drama is too prickly to embrace comfortably: the heroes steal for their own gain, and when womanizer Macleane falls for Lady Rebecca (the ever lovely Liv Tyler), it takes a leap of the heart to get on board with the film's romantic angle. As for the up-and-coming Alan Cumming (looking a bit too Pee-wee Herman-esque for anyone's good), he's employed far too sparsely as the delectably foppish Lord Rochester.

-- Tom Meek