Ordinary Decent Criminal is a movie that you may not have even heard of - in spite of it's impressive cast. Kevin Spacey plays Michael Lynch a locally famous thief/family man, who ostensibly lives off the dole, while pulling one big heist after another. You could drive a lorry through the holes in the plausibility of this Thaddeus O' Sullivan directed version of the Keystone Cops. Partly based on Martin Cahill (the Dublin thief whose exploits inspired John Boorman's The General) Lynch thumbs his nose at the authorities and if he gets in a legal pinch from time to time he merely pays an IRA acquaintance to blow up the car of the Judge and away he goes with his smug little Kevin Spacey grin.

Lynch is an interesting family man, kind and attentive to his children whom are mothered both by Linda Fiorentino and evidently Linda's sister - both women seem to happily share his marital attentions. To list the problems with this film would not be worth either of our time. Strangely Colin Farrell has a fairly sizable part in the film, but I don't think the camera settles on his face long enough for him to do any actual acting. Lynch and his cronies all of which you'll recognize from various other better Irish films are celebrities of a sort and at one point it gets so ridiculous that Lynch and his men are followed around 24/7 by at least a dozen Irish Guard, including a high ranking official.

All of which makes it pretty difficult for Lynch to pull his final caper, which has a bit of a Thomas Crown angle, but the problem is that you really don't care whether he succeeds or fails because this film is so ineptly crafted that you could give a rats ass about anybody that pops up on screen. Spacey himself may not be natural cast as an Irish folk hero, but he does bring his usual sly wit to the role, managing to make Lynch at least likable, if not very interesting. It's just a pity that the film-makers, like the bumbling police officers who follow Lynch all over town without coming close to catching him, sometimes seem so in awe of Spacey themselves that they forget about everything else. Like I did.