The Misfits (Movie)

Pierce Brosnan leads a band of quirky thieves in this hopelessly fumbled heist movie.“The Misfits,” Renny Harlin’s 25th movie, unfolds mainly in the Middle East, but don’t expect its tone and temperament to differ appreciably from its predecessors. Insouciant as ever, Harlin simply does his own thing, location be damned. He’s the honey badger of cinema.His titular band of Robin Hood-style criminals is at least a diverse bunch, comprising a droll bank robber (Nick Cannon), a fire-loving explosives expert (Mike Angelo), a lithe martial artist (Jamie Chung) and a cool con man (Rami Jaber). To enact their latest heist — a cache of gold bars buried deep inside an Abu Dhabi prison and earmarked for terrorists — the Misfits need the smooth skills of Pace (Pierce Brosnan), a gentleman thief and recent maximum-security escapee.Pace is far from on board with the team’s vaguely altruistic plans for the loot, but he and Schultz (Tim Roth), the prison’s shady owner, have unresolved history. Also, his estranged daughter (Hermione Corfield), yet another Misfit, is hanging around to remind him of his humanitarian duty to refugees and other downtrodden. I did not make that up.Equally insulting to Arabic dialects and the Muslim Brotherhood, “The Misfits” is inarguably awful, its grandiose muddle of a plot unimproved by bored camels and barely clothed women. Yet for the first 20 minutes or so — a blitz of eye candy and ear worms — its breezy action and the performers’ good cheer are enough to entertain. Too soon, though, the movie drifts into narrative doldrums that derail its momentum and drain the cast’s energy.“Oh, bollocks,” Schultz mutters resignedly when he sees his gold is gone. Like the movie, he seems almost too tired to care.The MisfitsRated R for mass vomiting and a bloody cellphone attack. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. In theaters. More