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Fool's Gold

You would think a movie starring Sean Bean as a Bank Robber would be great, wouldn't you? Well, ha! Clearly, you would be fooled as easily as I into watching the Truly Wretched Fool's Gold: The Story of the Brink's-Mat Robbery. (Truth be told, I'm somewhat appeased by the fact that it turns out to be a TV movie, but still.) Our Torture Session begins with, and I'm not kidding here, a Two Minute Close Up of Sean Bean Driving. Seriously. Two minutes. And that's just the first of many Sean Bean Driving Shots. I can only assume they were trying to get the run time up there. Here's the scoop: Sean Bean plays Michael "Mickey" McAvoy, a criminal... I guess... mastermind, who works for a crime syndicate called The Brothers. But there's only one of them. Maybe his siblings are in jail. Tired of working for The Brothers, or Brother, as the case may be, McAvoy plans his own robbery. At first, all goes well: they get in, they capture the guards, handcuff them, pull down their pants and splash their, er, personals with gasoline, threatening them with matches if they don't cooperate. However, when they get to the vaults, there's no money. Just boxes and boxes of gold bars, which they take. Of course, what they don't realize is that gold bars, especially printed with the bank's logo, are really hard to get rid of. It's not like you can even put them in a candy machine...

This is about the point when I started rolling around on the floor in agony, so I'm not clear on many of the Plot Points. Suffice it to say, Mr. McIvoy gets busted, The Brothers are called in to find a way of laundering the cash, those who are in charge of protecting McIvoy's cut betray him, and Sean Bean sleeps only in pyjama bottoms. Wretchedly written, shot, conceived, and soundtracked (no music, except for occasional saxophone solos), Fool's Gold is an exercise in endurance. And I think there were at least three or four movies going on here. Ugh. My head is starting to throb just thinking about it. Take my advice and stay away from this one.