11 Harrowhouse

Engaging caper movie which manages to breathe some new life into the old formula: American outsider (Grodin) grappling with a bland wall of English bowlers, brollies and phlegm as he becomes involved in an elaborate plan to rob a London diamond house. Some pleasingly fantastical notions (painted cockroaches used to blaze a trail to the target vault), and witty use made of Grodin's offscreen commentary to spoof the usual genre heroics. But the last quarter of the film, already undercut by the fact that the amateur thieves suddenly and inexplicably develop professional skills, degenerates into direly facetious knockabout.