As thick as thieves

If you remember Louis Malle's Crackers, Alan Taylor's Palookaville or Woody Allen's Small Time Crooks - or even, if you're old enough, Mario Monicelli's I Soliti Ignoti (The Usual Unknowns), the 1958 daddy of them all - you will find this amiable heist comedy one to add to your list of collectables.

All have much the same plot: a bunch of eccentric low-lifers break into some lucrative premises after the loot in the next-door apartment/house/bank, only to find that they've misread the route map.

Sam Rockwell, William H Macy (doubling as safecracker and baby-minder), Isaiah Washington, Michael Jeter, Patricia Clarkson and George Clooney (in a five-minute cameo role as a tattooed-all-over mastermind who can barely turn a safe drill in the right direction) are the street people in a ghetto nicknamed "the Beirut of Cleveland".

The Russo Brothers' script is overstuffed and their direction under-finessed, though some of the gags are good: especially the nuns who fund the enterprise, charging "the usual interest" and when that's queried, retorting: "We're still better than Leo the Lip."

Ocean's 11, this is not, and the mugging is heavy-duty stuff; but its aimless geniality ultimately wins one over - though I wish it hadn't been thought necessary for everyone to use the F-word so often.

We get enough of that in life.

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Cert: cert15