However nervous he may be in everyday life, Bruce Willis the film star remains fearless, tough and laconic on screen.

Here he and Billy Bob Thornton play America's most famous bank robbers - the Sleepover Bandits who, courteously but firmly, hold bank managers prisoner in their own homes overnight before robbing the business premises early next morning.

Barry Levinson's film begins with the pair of them reportedly shot to death in a bank raid that had gone wrong and thereafter, by means of a somewhat clumsy flashback device, we learn how they had reached this dire state.

For a start, their simple life of theft had been complicated by a chance encounter between the nervous hypochondriac Thornton and a dissatisfied housewife, Cate Blanchett, which had led to the robbers being obliged to hold her hostage.

As it turns out she is more than a match for both of them and, indeed, falls in love with both of them as they do with her.

All of a sudden, they're a menage a trois and she's part of the gang.

What we've got then is a crime caper which, though not at all disagreeable, suffers from the fact that it's never sure whether to emphasise the crime or the caper and a set-up that means you don't need to be a rocket scientist to guess how it will all work out.

The strength of the film lies in the performances, especially those of the increasingly versatile Thornton and Blanchett, who is fast becoming one of the best actresses around.

Barry Norman