I really wanted to like this movie. It was recommended to me by a friend and it's set in Scotland my home country. It's obviously attempting to tap in on the type of feel-good contemporary light-comedies brought to the fore by the likes of Bill Forsyth, but I'm sorry to say that for me it fell pretty flat.
From the start I was unconvinced of the premise of the film, two discontented Edinburgh teenagers hatch a get-rich-quick plan by becoming masked motorbiker highwaymen preying on tour buses usually containing wealthy American tourists.
When the incompetent local police fail to catch them they then start to distribute their loot to the needy in society and so become popular local heroes of the Robin hood type, catching the wider public's imagination in the process, to the point where Americans send in the FBI and their exploits reach a global TV audience.
One of the lads even finds love on the bus as he romances a pretty young tour guide who apparently can see literally, behind the mask. Meanwhile his partner-in-crime has decided that he wants to move into the big time and hooks up with the gangland set to carry out a major hold-up on the Women's Institute annual coach outing. It's no surprise of course to learn that the girlfriend is on duty that day on that very bus, leading to the inevitable coming together of all the plot strands for the denouement, such as it is.
Maybe being Scottish I apply a higher level of criticism on films from my native country but I just found the whole enterprise embarrassingly lame. The young actors in the leads all look and sound as if they're still in their first year at the R. S. A. M. D. And the comedy itself is contrived, weak and forced.
There's also some unnecessary racial stereotyping and I was certainly offended by the casual use of the racially-abusive "P-word" at one point.
Unsurprisingly, it was thought necessary to cast some established actors in supporting roles such as Bernard Hill, whose attempt at a Scottish accent fails to cross the border and Ned Beatty who's required to submit to dragging up for a cheap laugh at the conclusion.
For a much better and entertaining film showing how the disaffected youth of the Thatcher era in Scotland might rebel against the establishment, look no further than Forsyth's "That Sinking Feeling" from a few years earlier. But really apart from some nice location shots of places well known to me personally such as central Edinburgh, Queens Park in Glasgow and parts of Argyll and an easily recognisable soundtrack by the late Stuart Adamson of the band Big Country, I mostly winced with embarrassment at this rather puerile and clumsily executed attempt at comedy.
From the start I was unconvinced of the premise of the film, two discontented Edinburgh teenagers hatch a get-rich-quick plan by becoming masked motorbiker highwaymen preying on tour buses usually containing wealthy American tourists.
When the incompetent local police fail to catch them they then start to distribute their loot to the needy in society and so become popular local heroes of the Robin hood type, catching the wider public's imagination in the process, to the point where Americans send in the FBI and their exploits reach a global TV audience.
One of the lads even finds love on the bus as he romances a pretty young tour guide who apparently can see literally, behind the mask. Meanwhile his partner-in-crime has decided that he wants to move into the big time and hooks up with the gangland set to carry out a major hold-up on the Women's Institute annual coach outing. It's no surprise of course to learn that the girlfriend is on duty that day on that very bus, leading to the inevitable coming together of all the plot strands for the denouement, such as it is.
Maybe being Scottish I apply a higher level of criticism on films from my native country but I just found the whole enterprise embarrassingly lame. The young actors in the leads all look and sound as if they're still in their first year at the R. S. A. M. D. And the comedy itself is contrived, weak and forced.
There's also some unnecessary racial stereotyping and I was certainly offended by the casual use of the racially-abusive "P-word" at one point.
Unsurprisingly, it was thought necessary to cast some established actors in supporting roles such as Bernard Hill, whose attempt at a Scottish accent fails to cross the border and Ned Beatty who's required to submit to dragging up for a cheap laugh at the conclusion.
For a much better and entertaining film showing how the disaffected youth of the Thatcher era in Scotland might rebel against the establishment, look no further than Forsyth's "That Sinking Feeling" from a few years earlier. But really apart from some nice location shots of places well known to me personally such as central Edinburgh, Queens Park in Glasgow and parts of Argyll and an easily recognisable soundtrack by the late Stuart Adamson of the band Big Country, I mostly winced with embarrassment at this rather puerile and clumsily executed attempt at comedy.