"Loophole" is a disappointingly dull, visually unappealing caper movie. I can recommend it only to genre addicts. The characters are anonymous and cold; you don't connect with them, so you don't care what will happen to them. Still, this minor picture isn't really bad...until its really LOUSY finale. Without revealing it, I can say that the "solution" the screenwriter finds to the characters' problems shows offensive incompetence on his part. The ending (presented as a twist) is simply unacceptable and I can't believe that these respectable actors agreed to play in a film that ended is such a LOUSY way.

Down on his luck architect Stephen Booker (a fine and sympathetic performance by Martin Sheen) gets a much-needed job by wily criminal mastermind Mike Daniels (a sturdy portrayal by Albert Finney) in which he assists Daniels and his crew in pulling off a daring bank heist.

Director John Quested relates the absorbing story at a steady pace, grounds the premise in a plausible workaday reality, and builds a good deal of tension. The smart and compact script by Jonathan Hale not only offers an interesting underlying theme about integrity versus necessity, but also does a neat job of presenting the criminals as a likeable bunch of regular guys who just happen to steal stuff for a living as well as keeps the narrative refreshingly simple and straightforward throughout. The sound acting by the capable cast keeps this movie humming: Susannah York as Stephen's concerned wife Dinah, Colin Blakely as Mike's no-nonsense partner Gardner, Jonathan Pryce as the antsy Godfrey, and Robert Morley as fed-up bank manager Godfrey. The heist is quite gripping and suspenseful. Both Michael Reed's crisp cinematography and Lalo Schifrin's moody score are up to speed. An on the money movie.

Martin Sheen is an out of work architect with kids at private school, two big mortgages and a rather unsympathetic wife (Susannah York). His job hunting isn't going terribly well, until, that is, he alights on Albert Finney and Colin Blakely who employ him to carry out some building extension work. When he turns up at their offices one afternoon to find them empty, he smells a rat and his new employers come clean about their true motive, and he - broke as he is - is their ideal choice to help them with a plan to relieve the bank next door of squillions of pounds. As heist movies go, it is ok - it moves along well enough after a pretty plodding start and the theory and planning stages of their scheme are quite engaging, but there is no chemistry at all between the gang - which by now includes Jonathan Pryce, Tony Doyle and Dominic Guard and the sudden expertise with which Sheen adapts to his new profession stretches even the most optimistic of viewers. It all takes too long, and the ending conjures epithets from their escape route.