Distributed by
Warner Home Video

Cert: 15

Running time: 92 minutes

Year: 1996

Cat.no: SO14399

Released: 3rd February 1997

Sound: Dolby Surround

Presented in fullscreen

Price: £10.99

Extras : None

---

Director:

Bill Bennett

Producer:

James G. Robinson

Screenplay:

Denis Leary and Mike Armstrong

Cast:

Roz : Sandra Bullock (Demolition Man, Speed, While You Were Sleeping)
Frank O'Brien : Denis Leary (Demolition Man, Hostile Hostages)
Evan Marsh : Stephen Dillane (The Rector's Wife)
O'Malley : Yaphet Kotto (Alien, "Homicide : Life on the Streets)
Fitzie : Mike Starr (Dumb and Dumber, Night Trap)

Stolen Hearts reunites two of the stars from the 1993 Hollywood action smash-hit, Demolition Man, Sandra Bullock and Denis Leary, in a romantic comedy about a woman whose relationship reaches a crossroads at exactly the wrong time. Roz is fed up with her long-standing partner, part-time plaster and sometimes petty thief, Frank.

Reluctantly, she agrees to accompany him to a luxury coastal resort where he is to pull off one last heist - the sale of a famous painting worth $4 million. There, the couple try to fit in among the yacht-and-caviar crowd. Suddenly Roz experiences how the other half lives...and worse still discovers she rather likes it.

Although Bullock and Leary didn't share a great deal of screen time together in Demolition Man, they make a good pairing in this film and spark off well against one another. Both are also very watchable in their own right.

Bullock has easily made her name as one of Hollywood's leading ladies, and Leary is a charasmatic stand-up comedian, probably best known for his live performance, No Cure For Cancer, and his on-going run of commercials on UK television for Holsten Pils. Leary also appeared in his own scene in Natural Born Killers reciting a ranting poem about Mickey and Mallory Knox, but which was later cut from the final film and exists only as part of the extras on the unrated Director's Cut NTSC Laserdisc.

Yaphet Kotto also turns in a good comic role as an embittered and sarcastic police chief, with the main bits of comic timing from him coming as a result of having no respect for the cops below him who have no respect in return.

Picture quality is good, and occasional use of surround sound is made mainly for spot effects or car chases, particularly in the opening scene.

In the US, this film didn't do so well under the title, Two If By Sea, but in the opinion of this reviewer, all in all, this sort of film would make a pleasant afternoon or evening's viewing for anyone not bothered by a few f-words here and there.

Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 1997.