Partway through Bandits, Kate (Cate Blanchett) is asked to decide between her two bank-robber lovers, Joe (Bruce Willis) and Terry (Billy Bob Thornton). The guys are buddies from way back (they broke out of prison together), but now that they’ve both slept with the spectacularly willful and "unstable" Kate, each wants his claim to her made clear. But then she declares that she doesn’t want to choose, that making a choice would be a simple solution to a complicated situation, and so the men agree — at least initially — to her terms.

So far, so like Jules and Jim meets Bonnie and Clyde. The men become famous as the "sleepover bandits," so named by media hypesters because they spend the night before a robbery at some bank manager’s suburban home, then steal the money the next morning, without violence or even much fuss. (They’re also called "Robin Hoods," and consider themselves victims of a capitalist system, but as far as I can tell, they keep all the money they steal.) Kate, who has left her husband after years of his diffident neglect, joins Joe and Terry as a "permanent hostage," then beds each man separately. They have their own reasons for loving her. Where intellectual, neurotic Terry likes her impulsiveness and passion, action-oriented Joe puts it more reductively: "She’s got saliva," meaning, he explains, she kisses well.

The emotional three-way proceeds until, inevitably, the men can stand it no longer. One night they begin fighting, awkwardly flailing at each another’s faces, falling through a plate-glass window, scrambling and falling over themselves in the dirt. Kate watches for a minute, then loses her patience. Tossing her brilliantly red hair, she throws up her hands and yells so loud that Joe and Terry stop everything and drop their jaws: "This is over!"

Would that it were. But no, there’s a bit more non-action that needs to happen for Barry Levinson’s blandly romantic caper flick to find its ostensibly happy ending. And so, Bandits continues to offer up retread movie moments, including a return to its Swordfish-like opening scene, where the boys are trapped in a bank with hostages, surrounded by half the L.A.P.D. and arguing vehemently with each another over — wouldn’t you know? — the lovely, vivacious and so-desirable Kate. What she sees in them remains somewhat obscure. Joe is smug and bossy, Terry insecure and prissy, but still she pronounces that together, they make the "perfect man." Corny, but I suppose we can grant her that much slack. After all, she sees Joe and Terry as an adventure. In turn, they recognize that she’s a bad idea (or, as Terry puts it, "Kate’s an iceberg waiting for the Titanic"), yet they find themselves more or less cheerfully sucked into her manic-depressive vortex.

Apparently, she suits both men’s deepest needs. She begins her first night with Joe separated only by a blanket hung from the ceiling à la It Happened One Night. As Terry listens in from the other room, Joe and Kate discover they share a special affection for Bonnie Tyler’s "Total Eclipse of the Heart." (Though Joe calls it the "ultimate sappy chick song," he does know all the words.) By contrast, her first night with Terry begins when he lists a few of his many hypochondriacal symptoms. Turns out that Kate’s a willing nurse, and besides, she says, she appreciates his intellect (just why is not entirely clear).

Okay, Kate’s a little strange, but such wacky dames are the well-known impetus for great screwball, sometimes even subversive, comedy. And Blanchett’s detailed delirium goes a long way toward making her increasingly dodgy character work. Still, while Bandits looks like it might have been fun to make, even the gallant Blanchett is stifled by Kate’s stale situation. True, Kate declares herself an "outlaw" when she refuses to choose between her lovers, but she’s still a standard-issue girl, only able to measure herself in romantic and domestic terms.

The more rambunctious, if not exactly innovative, relationship here is Terry and Joe’s. (And while they obviously use her to work through their own co-dependency and intimacy issues, well… let’s just say that this particular film isn’t going to consider that possibility.) Such convoluted, anxious-making male bonding is familiar ground for director Levinson (Diner, Rain Man, Sleepers); in Bandits, it gets an appropriately hysterical context, when Joe and Terry act out their relationship for their fans, granting an interview to egotistical Darren Head (Bobby Slayton), host of Criminals at Large, an America’s Most Wanted-type series. Moments from this interview appear throughout Bandits (and as outtakes during closing credits), as if to underline the elaborate performance of their camaraderie. This is their saving grace. At some level, they know what they are: self-consciously generic buddies in a generic buddy film, no matter how delicious Kate and her saliva.

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