What a waste of my time!!!

Gripping story with well-crafted characters

From my favorite movies..

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

After the Sunset (2004): Dir: Brett Ratner / Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Salma Hayek, Woody Harrelson, Don Cheadle, Naomie Harris: Surprisingly fun and often amusing action comedy referencing retirement for a couple of thieves played by Pierce Brosnan and Salma Hayek. Problem is that Brosnan has one more heist to make despite Hayek's disapproval. The object of desire is a diamond aboard a cruise ship. Woody Harrelson plays an F.B.I. agent always outsmarted by Brosnan and the setup establishes this relationship. Now Harrelson throws the news regarding the diamond at Brosnan and a strange bond transpires. Detailed and funny with a conclusion that hilariously ties into the opening. This is one of Brett Ratner's better films. He previously made such low grade junk as Red Dragon and Rush Hour. Brosnan is not side stepping his James Bond role by much but he is still effective as a thief attempting one last shot at greatness before his believed satisfaction. Hayek is also effective despite the fact that she leads to an obvious conclusion. Harrelson brings humour as the foiled agent who is more on the ball than at first glance. Don Cheadle plays a gangster with an assignment for Brosnan. Naomie Harris plays a police constable whom the Harrelson aligns himself with before she learns some facts. It is simply just an action farce but with the humour it becomes much more. Score: 9 / 10

Awful Pierce Brosnan-Woody Harrelson film where Brosnan and girlfriend Selma Hayak retire to the Jamaica Islands after a career of stealing. They're pursued by agent Harrelson, who apparently has more on his mind than capturing Brosnan.Brosnan twice traps Harrelson in a sealed car at the film's beginning and end.Harrelson does steal the movie here with his devilish ways and is a sight to be seen.The picture is basically done in by some very bad writing. It can become confusing at times;especially, when Don Cheadle enters as a local gangster who tries to coax Brosnan into stealing a Napoleon diamond.There is some interesting under the water scenes in a rather dull, tedious production.

Pierce Brosnan and Selma Hayak star in "After the Sunset," a 2004 movie directed by Brett Ratner and also starring Woody Harrelson and Don Cheadle.Brosnan is Max, a diamond thief who retires to Paradise Beach in the Bahamas with his girlfriend Lola (Hayak) after his final success, the second of three Napoleon diamonds. He got the first one, too. In his wake he made a fool of an FBI agent Stanley (Harrelson) who was carrying the second diamond under guard. Stanley is so angered and freaked out that he's put on suspension. However, no one on Paradise Island knows that. He shows up on the island just as a ship displaying the Napoleon III diamond pulls into port. When Max steals it, he plans to be ready for him.And Max is under some heavy pressure to do just that. He's visited by the biggest gangster on the island (Cheadle) who wants Max to steal the diamond for him so he can build a paramilitary installation in place of the children's hospital he demolished. Lola, on the other hand, doesn't want Max even contemplating coming out of retirement.Entertaining film in the kind of movie that USA Network used to produce years ago - it's a lighthearted movie with beautiful scenery, beautiful people, lots of romance, and a derivative story told in an interesting way.The only problem with this film is that, without Brosnan and Hayak, this could be a TV movie for Lifetime. It's not special enough to stand on its own.This is the type of film that makes a great rental but one you might not have wanted to pay $10 or $12 to see. Nevertheless, it is enjoyable.

Things we might learn thanks to dross films like After the Sunset: 'Latino' women are scorching hot; there exists within the F.B.I. agents so inept that upon catching a shark whilst fishing, they will shoot them for good measure; women are nothing but mere objects that should dress in bikini's and keep their mouths shut when two epically superior men talk business with one another; stealing things is a good thing to do and theft is generally sexy.These are the things that After the Sunset, directed by Brett Ratner and starring Pierce Brosnan, glamorise. These are the ideas After the Sunset bring to the plate and exploit for mere entertainment. Make no mistake, this film is written by men; made by men; for men and I'm not talking about in a constructive manner like Oliver Stone's Wall Street. After the Sunset is close to dead in almost all departments. The thinking behind it is that a director will pull together a couple of actors everyone will recognise, a smoking hot actress everyone will like due to the range of outfits they'll get her in and then clear off to the Caribbean for a few months – oh, and they'll be shooting a film while they're there. But that's the grating thing with this film, all the actors and actresses have a smug sort of smirk on their faces throughout the experience as they potter about in a film that they know deep down is absolute junk and are there to merely enjoy the locale whilst systematically getting paid.Ratner does not even need an interesting story, if it's a few months in the Caribbean he'll take it. The film signals Brosnan's first post-Bond adventure and it feels very much like Brosnan's Bond himself has retired from British Intelligence, found himself a partner and gone off to a paradise to live out his days. The film opens with a Bond type stunt in which Max Burdett (Brosnan) and partner Lola Cirillo (Hayek) rob the F.B.I. of a diamond in a case cuffed to Stan Lloyd's (Harrelson) hand. What I found rather uncomfortable here is how a man (who is absolutely terrified) can be shown to be locked in a jeep while gas seeps through one of the heater vents and slowly either kills or knocks him out. This is juxtaposed with the two thieves kissing passionately as a cheesy song plays through the radio. From here After the Sunset announces itself as the sort of sick, uneasy and messy film it is and never until it has ended does it rise above the level it peaks at during the heist two minutes in.From here, Burdett and Cirillo retire to the utopia that is the Caribbean. Theft is their fetish, it is their non-sexual object or activity that really turns them on. At the mere mention or thought of stealing something, even in the process of stealing, these two characters are thrust wildly into the mindset of passion. In fact, this film carries a strong air of sexuality be it women as the object of desire or a homoerotic undertone. The first thing is that while the film glamorises theft and stealing, it maintains that air that everything done in this film is 'sexy'. Selma Hayek exists in this film to merely wear a bikini and look attractive, that is it. In fact the film is so distasteful that her attractiveness and general sexual presence has to act as the film's main source for comedy with the secondary source being Harrelson's bumbling and inept federal agent antics. Throughout the film, Hayek will slowly remove outer pieces of clothing; come onto the character of Max Burdett and in one instance act out a fake sadomasochistic act over a two way radio to con an eavesdropping character, all in the name of comedy. Then there is the unoriginal idea for a narrative that consists of Burdett going for 'one last job'; the job in question a diamond on display on a luxury cruise ship in the area. Max doesn't even know it's there until Agent Lloyd points it out to him, lucky he did otherwise they'd be no story. From here, Max is a man in crisis. He ignores his vows that he should be writing for the love of his partner; he becomes confused over his sexuality once his marriage threatens to fall apart and then sleeps with Harrelson's character in one of a few homoerotic scenes after this. But Agent Lloyd is equally out of his depth in a film that doesn't have any. Shooting a gun at a shark, down into the floor of a boat stating "You have the right to remain silent!" has to qualify as one of the dumbest excuses a film has to offer for mere petty laughs. Then there is the further evidence that this film exists for mere comedy driven romances when Lloyd begins to develop a relationship with Jamaican police officer Sophie (Harris). She begins strong and independent and I had a scrape of respect for the film in having her that way. But the film then has the male character of Lloyd chip away at her personality and soon enough, they're together in a mindless and somewhat silly series of scenes.So the film fails as a heist film even if the final act revolves around one. The film also grotesquely fails as a study of relationships and what we find attractive. Women are mere objects and if they're not to begin with then they will be tamed eventually. Burdett and Lloyd go through separate crises themselves and must share beds and rub suntan lotion on one another before the film gives us a final weak and incomprehensible twist. If the film does do something right, it's that it ends when we want it to.