SnoopyStyle
Cat burglar Karen McCoy (Kim Basinger) is released from prison after 6 years for the bank robbery. She's on parole with only the suit she went to court with. Her ex told her son Patrick that she's dead. Gary Buckner is her harsh parole officer. J.T. Barker (Val Kilmer) is an incompetent robber eager to be in her next job. She's trying to go straight but nobody is willing to hire an ex-con. J.T.'s relative Jack Schmidt (Terence Stamp) wants her to do one more job. Buckner threatens Karen with more prison unless she does the job. When she refuses, Patrick is kidnapped.The first half sets up for a solid caper movie. Everything is against Karen. She's the underdog with a heart of gold. The caper is functional. It's at least six years since Karen has done a job and she is still up to date with security tech. It's hard to imagine her ex holding off calling the cops. There are a few little things that add up to a less compelling caper movie.
Mr-Fusion
From what I've seen (for the most part), if there's a Trans Am in a movie, then the movie's going to be good. "The Driver", "Smokey and the Bandit", "Donnie Darko", "Blue Thunder", all awesome, and each one proudly displaying a Firebird. Pretty good rule of thumb, thus far.Not so with the "The Real McCoy", which is mostly a brain-dead affair - in the sense that you can be half-comatose on the couch and still follow the plot. This thing's so formulaic, it doesn't take any brain power to keep up. It's just one heist movie cliché after another. They even manage to waste Terrence Stamp on a vanilla bad guy role (dammit, that should be a federal crime!). It's a little shocking just how meek Kim Basinger comes off here, what with her being the numero-uno cat burglar. Who knows, maybe Catwoman ruined me, but they could've hardened this character.5/10
The_Film_Cricket
'The Real McCoy' is a heist movie in which the heroine can work her way into and out of the most complicated of security devices but strangely enough can't seem to get out of a tired, predictable cliché-ridden script.It stars Kim Basinger as a burglar so good at her job that she has become famous as The Real McCoy. We meet her coming out of a six year prison term after being set up by Schmidt (Terence Stamp) one of those irritating movie villains who lives in a mansion and exists in the movie only to issue an ultimatum to the hero.Turns out that Schmidt was the one who set her up, after helping her to break into a bank and trapping her inside. He and her parole officer devise a little scheme to kidnap her son and hold him hostage until she pulls a major bank job for them. And yes, like countless career criminals in the movies, she wants to go straight.Here's where the movie loses me: The bank that Schmidt wants her to break into is the same bank that he trapped her in six years ago. Why did he go to the trouble of double-crossing her in the first place? Because the screenwriter doesn't think that the audience is smart enough to ask that question.The biggest disappointment to me is the bank vault itself, which is of course peanuts to this professional. I am always dazzled by overwrought security measures taken in the movies. Look at the 150+ floors and 9 security doors that Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta Jones had to go through to get into the bank vault in 'Entrapment'. Or look at the security gates, the basement dwelling and the thick wall of plexiglass that held Hannibal Lecter in 'The Silence of the Lambs'. The vault in this movie by comparison is a big yawn.Oh, and Val Kilmer shows up to befriend Basinger mostly because the filmmakers don't trust her to be the sole hero in a caper movie. Everyone in this movie right down to the kidnapped son is a chess piece set in place and then used as ordered by the rules of caper movie conventions.
elshikh4
As a heist movie I didn't enjoy much. As an action I have seen better and more memorable. As for the acting; no one did her or his best here. So what's this movie's really interesting point ? I'll tell you. It's the title's role.Movies have accustomed us to watch that kind of roles played by men, not women. That confident, genius, and heartwarming thief has been always a man. This time it's (Kim Basinger).Since the 1970s the American cinema had gone a long way to assure that women can be heroes too. Look closer to 1993 movies : there was violent yet sensitive woman (Point of No Return), a remake of the French movie (La Femme Nikita – 1990), who is a dusty female copy of James Bond. Funny and philanthropic woman (Sister Act 2 : Back in the Habit), a comic copy of (To Sir With Love – 1967). And there was (Body Snatchers) too, a remake of (Invasion of the Body Snatchers – 1959), where the lead role was given to a girl (played by Gabrielle Anwar). Clearly, it was a man's world, but not anymore.In another, less daring, less creative, treatment this could have been a movie for say (Val Kilmer), however – for this movie's good and ours – THANK GOD it wasn't ! So, it's low-tone average entertainment for some afternoon, where its Real McCoy factor is in the sex of who played its Real McCoy !
AD
