Henry's Crime – review

This affable indie heist caper has obviously been concocted as an après-blockbuster vehicle for Keanu Reeves – who is the Henry of the title, a going-nowhere nice guy duped into driving the getaway car in a bank stickup. Sent down for a three-year stretch for his unwitting part in the hold-up, after his release Henry reasons that he might as well go out and rob the bank – tunnelling in from the theatre next door. He recruits a silver-tongued oldster conman (Caan on cracking form), who wangles him a part in a production of a Chekhov play opposite Farmiga's ballsy leading lady to cover up all that drilling and hammering – which they undertake with nary a dust sheet nor suspicious eyebrow raised. The sheer daftness of the scheme is presumably all part of the film's kooky, offbeat charm, and sometimes it is pretty funny. But the stiff deadpan dudeness that is the Keanu method means he gathers dust while the supporting actors outclass him by miles: particularly Farmiga – who is quite possibly the coolest woman in film right now – as an acid-tongued provincial theatre diva. Reeves only gets into his stride late in – too late, really – treading the boards with a comedy beard looking like Abraham Lincoln and hamming it up splendidly.