About a police detective, Jack, who, while doing a friend a favor and searching for a runaway teenager on Turk Street, stumbles upon a bizarre band of criminals about to pull off a bank robbery. Jack finds himself being held hostage while the criminals decide what to do with him, and the leader's beautiful girlfriend, Erin, is left alone to watch Jack. Erin, who we discover is a master manipulator of the men in the gang, reveals another side to Jack - a melancholy romantic who could have been a classical cellist. She finds Jack's captivity an irresistible turn-on and he can't figure out if she's for real, or manipulating him, too. Before the gang returns, Jack and Erin's connection intensifies and who ends up with the money is anyone's guess. While doing a friend a favor and searching for a runaway teenager, a police detective stumbles upon a bizarre band of criminals about to pull off a bank robbery. I didn't think much of this cheap, B-movie thriller which takes a story by famed pulp writer Dashiell Hammett as its inspiration. It's a typical hostage/bank robbers style story featuring a decent cast of seasoned faces who get wasted amid way too diluted thrills and spills, one-dimensional characterisation, and overly choreographed join-the-dots narration.<br/><br/>The caricatures who make up the bank robbers in this film are really quite laughable. We get Joss Ackland and Stellan Skarsgard slumming it as the old timers, Doug Hutchison reprising his psycho schtick from THE GREEN MILE, and Milla Jovovich going through the motions as the supposed alluring femme fatale. Samuel L. Jackson is the most fun actor here, but he basically spends the majority of the film tied to a chair and has little to work with. His hostage film THE NEGOTIATOR was ten times better.<br/><br/>The most criminal thing about NO GOOD DEED isn't the robberies carried out by the protagonists but the fact that it's boring. Crime thrillers should never be dull but this one never raises the interest for a moment. Although one of the screenwriters did THE LAST SEDUCTION, the other worked on WALKER, Texas RANGER and this does feel like a cheap TV movie. Poor old director Bob Rafelson must be feeling like his days of doing THE POSTMAN RINGS TWICE and BLACK WIDOW are long in the past. The movie is mostly done in a comic style, not slapstick but humorous lines throughout.<br/><br/>Samuel L. Jackson is a cop, Jack Friar, specializing in Grand Theft Auto. He also is a pretty good amateur musician, the Cello, about to go off to a week of fantasy camp with Yo-yo Ma. But a friend asks him to help find her 15 year old daughter, missing for 3 days, and gives him a photo.<br/><br/>By sheer luck he shows up at a home where crooks are planning a big bank heist, with cooperation of an insider. In the rain he loses the picture, and the bad guys jump to the erroneous conclusion that he was after them. He is held hostage, and gets to know Erin (Milla Jovovich) who happens to be a former virtuoso pianist from Russia (she really is from Russia, I wonder if she really plays?).<br/><br/>Stellan Skarsgård as Tyrone is the boss and mastermind. His biggest task seems to be holding everything together and breaking up fights among his misfits. <br/><br/>Many of the story elements seem forced, and there simply to advance the plot. Like, who would tie up a hostage to a roll-around desk chair, so that he could roll around and pick up items convenient to helping him escape?? But is was fun watching Jackson, Jovovich, and Skarsgard.<br/><br/>SPOILERS. Tyrone changes the plan after getting the computer disk with the wire transfer data for $10Million. Instead of all flying to a distant island, he planned to drive to Canada, and split the money with only himself, instead of the 5 others. Pressed for time, Jack convinces him to use his car, with a police light, which gets them across the border. But, Tyrone is killed in a shootout and Jack has Erin arrested. The 4 others all get killed along the way.
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