The Hard Word

This is a lousy caper movie where the heists are unimaginative, the characters are boring, and the makeup is atrocious. The Twentyman brothers (Guy Pearce, Joel Edgerton and Damien Richardson) are given temporary release from an Australian jail to perform some heists for their shifty lawyer (Robert Taylor). Lead brother Dale (Pearce) is being betrayed by his wife (a blonde Rachel Griffiths), who is screwing the shifty lawyer. All of this doesn’t matter because the prosthetic nose plopped into the middle of Pearce’s face will have you staring so intensely that major plot points will just float right by. Why a filmmaker would choose to make the normally striking Pearce look so goofy is beyond me. With the talents of Pearce and Griffiths involved, it is surprising how dull and banal this movie is, but not nearly as surprising as that stupid nose. It really is awful.