I love this movie so much

Great Film overall

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Thief Mike Daniels (Albert Finney) plans to break into the biggest bank in England for one last haul. His team sets up a false office in order to interview architects with the idea they can coax the suitable candidate into mapping out their underground digging job. Down-on-his-luck American Stephen Booker (Martin Sheen) seems to be the ideal candidate for the job, but he scoffs at the idea of being a criminal. That is until he finds out his wife (Susannah York) reallllly wants to start up her interior decorating business. OH NOES! So he descends (literally) into a life of crime in order to finance her dream. The "loophole" of the title refers to the fact they will break into the vault through the ground and set off a motion detector, but when the cops arrive they will see no one inside the bank and think it is glitch. I'm a sucker for bank heist pictures for some reason and this one definitely falls into that category. Unfortunately, while it has a great cast and is well made, it really takes no risks. There is some tension in the final third as rain starts to flood the sewer system and the men must rush to get out, but even that is handled rather mundanely. Sheen also sticks out like a sore thumb and it is easy to believe the role was written for a British fellow (his wife is a Brit after all) and then changed to an American to increase potential markets. Still, it is worth a look at least once if you loves you some men digging in confined spaces.

The whole movie goes well until it reaches its 20 final minutes, when the climax is about to happen. When you think you are going to have a lot of fun and a heck of a surprise, the movie just trolls you like you have never been trolled before. At first, I thought I was on Candy Camera or that I had seen an unofficial edited version of the movie. Unfortunately, it was neither case. It is ridiculous: the movie just ends, like a thunder. Boom: and you got the credits... At first is hard to believe, then you realize that was really it. I do not understand how the other critics do not point the obvious elephant in the room which is the lack of explanation regarding decisions taken by Martin Sheen at the end of the heist (which were a key part of the plot, at that stage of the movie) and how the other guys wrap up their activities... One guy simply dies out of nothing, for no reason, and the director does not even give us the opportunity to understand what took place... He simply appears floating dead in the water... At that moment, you just do not know if things went sour for the group or if they just went sour just for that one character. You also do not know if the poor guy got unlucky due to sabotage or forces of nature. The whole movie, in general, (until its 20 final minutes) is excellent: well produced, interesting, nicely filmed and edited. The last 20 minutes, however, destroy the whole venture and turn it into one of the worst wastes of time in the history of movies. How are people not raged with the meaningless cut in the picture? I searched several reviews to see if someone discussed the drastic unexplained cut, but it made me feel like I was in the Twilight Zone... No one touches the issue. Hahahaha... I have searched several videos in YouTube to make sure I got the version and all of them were like the one I saw, with the incredible cut right in the middle of the climax of the movie. No explanation is offered regarding the most interesting (and expected) part of the movie. It is just as if the money ended and they had to come to an abrupt "abort & shutdown". I visualize the funding people arriving at the studio and saying: "Stop everything right away. Let us go with what we have so far. Thank you, gentlemen, it was a pleasure working with you." A real shame for what could have been a fantastic movie.

Tense, ably constructed thriller is a credit to some strong players and an astute director. Blessed with a clever original work (novel by Robert Pollock), but not such an ingenious screenplay, director John Quested has been able to draw out his movie and squeeze it for a few drops of decent suspense.Albert Finney is perfectly debonair as the Englishman who has a penchant for safe-cracking. Having set his sights rather high for his next job, he employs the services of out of work architect Booker, well played by the young Martin Sheen. Susannah York, Coliin Blakely, Jonathan Pryce and Robert Morley also star.Saturday, January 8, 2000 - Video

"Loophole" is a disappointingly dull, visually unappealing caper movie. I can recommend it only to genre addicts. The characters are anonymous and cold; you don't connect with them, so you don't care what will happen to them. Still, this minor picture isn't really bad...until its really LOUSY finale. Without revealing it, I can say that the "solution" the screenwriter finds to the characters' problems shows offensive incompetence on his part. The ending (presented as a twist) is simply unacceptable and I can't believe that these respectable actors agreed to play in a film that ended is such a LOUSY way.