FlashCallahan A woman is released from prison, an expert bank robber who wants to settle down and go straight.But then her parole officer and her former employer try to get her to pull one more heist....This film is just basically the dramatic version of the notorious Bruce Willis vanity project 'Hudson Hawk', but with all the entertainment and fun taken out of it.The film disappeared without a trace when released here in November 1993, and if my facts are correct, I don't think it's ever been screened on T.V.Basinger is fine as the titular character, forced into one last job when her son is taken by General Zod, and her parole officer. But she get's to know her son, even though he thinks she is just a friend, and her real mother is dead.Hence 'The Real McCoy'.Val Kilmer visits from the set of True Romance as the potential love interest, but he mugs his way through his scenes, and acts like a complete and utter ego maniac, maybe life imitating art.It's not very exciting, the crew never appear to be in any danger, and then it finishes, where everyone predictably lives happily ever after.She should have stuck with Boxing Helena, it may be just as bad, but at least it's well remembered.

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.

alexcams Not sure why this film gets trashed as much as it does, since it's pretty good. It's worth watching for the cast alone -- Basinger, Kilmer and Stamp. But it must be said that the British film upon which it's based is better. That would be Bellman and True (from an old English song) starring a cast of people that you probably never heard of, headlined by Bernard Hill as the computer geek who has to go along to keep his son safe. Bellman and True also serves as something of a time capsule, taking us back to a grotty, depressed and depressing London that is barely visible in British films any more. We can probably put the change in tone down to the Four Weddings effect. The comparison of these two movies serves as an excellent example of one of the more interesting questions of popular culture: why are the Brits generally so much better at movies that feature crime than Hollywood? Think of Cracker, State of Play, Prime Suspect, Behind The Lines, and Mobile.