DON’T EXPECT ANY SPARKLE FROM THIS DIAMOND HEIST
The Love Punch (12A) Verdict: Witless crime caper
EMMA THOMPSON and Pierce Brosnan as an amicably divorced couple, Celia Imrie and Timothy Spall as their best friends, all teaming up for a frightfully middle- class jewellery- heist caper in the South of France . . . if that sounds like your idea of fun, I fear The Love Punch will come as a grave disappointment.
If, on the other hand, it sounds like the sort of film you would find almost any excuse to avoid, then trust your instincts.
Thompson plays Kate Jones, long since divorced from Richard (Brosnan), and now looking for love online, while he drifts from one younger woman to the next.
He is a corporate high-flyer, but arrives at work one day to find that the company has been bought by a ruthless French asset-stripper, Vincent Kruger (Laurent Lafitte), and that he is effectively broke.
Since Kate’s assets are still tied up with his, so is she. So naturally they set off for Paris to confront the rotter, and then to Cannes, where he is about to get married. When they find that he is giving his bride a $10 million diamond, they conspire with Pen (Imrie) and Jerry (Spall) to steal it, even though they’re all far too old for shinning up the outsides of buildings.
At no stage did I believe for a second in these characters or their story, and since that can’t be the fault of four such beloved actors, the culprit can only be the writerdirector, Joel Hopkins.
He fills the film with references to other movies, each less subtle than the last, but the effect of all the nods to The Italian Job, The Pink Panther, Hitchcock’s To Catch A Thief, Reservoir Dogs and the Bond movies, is to make you wish you were watching any one of those for the umpteenth time, rather than this misconceived and mostly witless affair.