Styx Reviews

Thieves exhibit little honor and less diplomacy in this familiar trek through a bleak criminal underworld. Bank robbers Art (Bryan Brown), Nelson (Peter Weller) and his brother, Mike (Angus MacFadyen), have a plan: Art will fake a heart attack and the heavily armed siblings will rush in disguised as EMS personnel; before the employess realize what's happened, the thieves will grab the loot and run. The heist transpires without a hitch, but a drug-addicted crony of the robbers' kills a security guard and they all wind up hotly pursued by the police. The gang's getaway ambulance overturns and burns, and though Nelson saves his brother, he doesn't reach Art (and the stolen money) before the vehicle explodes. Mike subsequently gets into hock to sadistic loan shark Eddie (Pierre Malherbe) over gambling debts. Though Nelson is content with his new life as a coffee shop owner, he reluctantly agrees to raise the $80,000 Mike owes Eddie. To Nelson's surprise, Mike has already lined up a score; to his amazement, he discovers that Art has not only recovered but also masterminded this new scheme! What neither brother realizes is that Art nurses a grudge over having been abandoned, though when Nelson learns that Art is sleeping with his ex-girlfriend, two-timer Brenda (Chantell Stander), he smells a rat. Then Eddie decides to muscle in on Art's domain and pays the price. The new caper, which involves stealing diamonds from an auction house, proceeds without a snags, but the aftermath is riddled with back-stabbing surprises. Director Alex Wright and screenwriter George Ferris try to encapsulate the human experience within the symbolic universe of criminals, but this pretentious film disintegrates under the weight of its underdeveloped developing characters and superficial philosophical posturing.