Gambit

Though the movie shares both a strap line and somewhat of a visual and comic style with one of my favourite TV shows, the con is not really on as much as you'd want it to be in Gambit, the story of a couple of bungling con artists trying to defraud a repulsively bad-mannered art collector (effortlessly played by the inimitable Alan Rickman). In fact, Rickman is more a cherry on the top of a series of rather excellent casting turns, with some of my favourite male actors of the moment completing the cast list in the forms of Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci. Cameron Diaz's unwilling inside-woman from the deep South is the only turn off, though more a fault of the gratingly irritating character than of her acting. In fact, it is more the content of the film itself, feeling more like a Mr Bean sketch than a well thought through heist movie, that provides the ultimate frustration. Though there are certainly some neat touches with the finale, there is a lingering feeling of too little too late, especially as the comedy depths have already been plumbed as low as a sequence involving Colin Firth's trousers, an iron spike, and the outside wall of London's Savoy hotel. The effortless sophistication of Hustle, this most certainly isn't.


I know I'm an annoying cynic, but how much do we think the Savoy invested in Gambit for this kind of placement?