The Misfits

This American comedy tells the story of a brilliant escape artist and renowned criminal, Richard Pace (Brosnan), who joins a group of eccentric thieves, which plans to give away the stolen money. The film opens with Pace escaping from a high security prison, and in the aftermath of his escape, he finds himself caught up in a major robbery that is being planned by a group of unconventional criminals. The Group needs Pace’s skills to pull off its heist, and is ‘The Misfits’ of the film’s title. The city of Abu Dhabi is the main setting for the movie.

The Misfits is a group of modern-day Robin Hoods, who rob unusually. They plan to steal millions of dollars worth of gold that lies under a prison building, privately owned by terrorist-financier, Warner Schultz (Roth), who does business with the Muslim Brotherhood. The gold is securely hidden by Schultz and the Brotherhood in one of Schultz’s Middle East prisons. The stored gold is used for funding terrorism activity worldwide, but the robbers plan to donate the money they get from selling the gold to international charities.

The group of would-be robbers is led eccentrically by a Beatles-loving bank robber, Ringo (Cannon), who provides a commentary for the film at its start, introducing viewers to the team of “The Misfits”. The team has a Middle Eastern con-man, The Prince (Jaber), who may or may not be of royal descent; a martial arts assassin-contortionist, Violet (Chung), who hates men; a neurotic demolition and pyrotechnically-inclined criminal, Wick (Mike Angelo); and an altruistic woman, Hope (Corfield), who has dedicated her life to working with UNICEF. Pace is lured into joining the Group by the fact that the most recent member of The Misfits is his estranged daughter, Hope, and the thought that the money that the group steals might just end up all belonging to him. Pace also wants revenge, because Schultz was responsible for his imprisonment, and he has already broken out of a number of Schultz’s prisons in the past. However, he learns that it is Hope, who has recruited “The Misfits” to steal the gold, and that complicates his motivations.

Brosnan’s acting gives a playful, almost casual, tone to the movie. The film is scenically set in the Middle East, and its action scenarios flow from London and Los Angeles to the Middle East. There is some tension in how the gold is actually stolen, and the movie aims consistently to be stylish. Brosnan has charmed many movie-goers with his James Bond in previous films. In contrast to his Bond film, Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), for instance, action sequences in this film are spread more thinly, and the film persistently keeps style central to its core concerns.

Impressive robberies such as Ocean’s Eleven (2001), are plentiful in the cinema, but this one tries too hard to be distinct. The film is loosely edited by intent, but its plotline is erratic, and it makes strong use of cliché material. UNICEF ends up receiving its largest-ever donation, and while the movie has some surprise twists, it also has some crude scenarios, including a penitentiary of male prisoners suffering, en masse, from diarrhoea and projectile vomiting.

This is not a movie for the discerning movie-goer, but there are some features of the film that render it sporadically entertaining. First, the film shows an interesting sweep of Middle Eastern surrounds. Second, it revels unashamedly, in the absolute idiocy of the membership of The Misfits, and some of its unexpected twists are clever. Overall, these characteristics give the film the look of an irreverent spoof, which is solidly reinforced by Brosnan’s jaunty style. En route, though, one has to try to ignore its loose editing, its racial taunts, and some heavy crudity.