Scott Roberts's The Hard Word is like an Australian Ocean's Eleven, which is still better than an American version of The Italian Job.  It's a heist flick that doesn't offer anything we haven't seen before, but it's still somewhat entertaining, thanks to a few very charismatic performances.

The brothers Twentymen (Guy Pearce, Joel Edgerton and Damien Richardson) are a gang of expert thieves, yet for some reason they're in prison as Word opens.  When their slimy lawyer (Robert Taylor) concocts a way to temporarily spring the brothers to perform one last lucrative scam, they end up getting blackmailed into knocking off the Melbourne Cup (a big horse race – not soccer, or a sailing thing).  It's all surprisingly loud, bloody and crude, which one wouldn't expect at the onset because the Twentymen motto forbids them from harming anyone during the course of their jobs.

Pearce's performance, despite sporting a ridiculously exaggerated lower palate and a nose he must have found while rooting through fellow Aussie Nicole Kidman's garbage, keeps Word afloat and makes it (barely) more than just another Tarantinoesque Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels rip-off.  One downside is the un-Lock Stock decision to up the number and importance of female characters.  Even Six Feet Under's Rachel Griffiths, who appears here as a platinum blonde with a more frightening sex drive than her Brenda Chenowith, doesn't make Word a satisfying experience.  There's too much aftermath at the end, and sadly, not enough of the secret language of butchers.

1:42 –

for strong violence, language, sexuality and brief drug use