Bellman and True

There are kiss-off points in Loncraine's caper thriller - notably a silky Mister Big who calls his victim 'Dear Heart' while the muscle brandishes a Stanley knife - but the complexity of the characters more than compensates. More crucially, the balance of the film is off in the telling, and after a gabbled scene-setter, we spend too long bogged down in an empty mansion with alcoholic computer expert Hiller (Hill), his small stepson (O'Brien), and Mr Big (Hope), as pressure is put on Hiller to hack into a bank's security system and take out the alarms. The villainy braces up with the appearance of Guv'nor (Newark), whose threats are convincing enough to cause Hiller an involuntary evacuation, and the actual robbery powers along on a nice mixture of humour and tension, topped by a getaway containing a memorably tight squeeze. Hill is grimly anxious as the reluctant pawn, and his bedtime story sessions with the boy are suitably transparent. Nice try.