Antonio Banderas teams up with Morgan Freeman in The Code (dir Mimi Leder, 2009), an Antonio Banderas and Morgan Freeman "vehicle" in which two jewel theives go through the required steps in an effort to lay their hands on a pair of Faberge eggs worth more than a king's ransom.

Wooden acting? You get it. Stagey takes? Ditto. Clumsy security guards? In abundance. High-tech safe-cracking gear? Heaps of it. Add into the mix earnest, lead-footed New York City police and you've got a run-of-the-mill crime thriller that is so artificial that every scene seems to have been heisted from some other robbery flic that you saw back in the days when this genre still had some legs.

The Russian immigrant angle does little to freshen up the dynamic between the actors, two of whom are notionally decent at what they do. But if ever Banderas and Freeman decided they wanted to make a picture so bad it would end their careers forever, this picture would be the one they chose.

The double-crosses and revelations that stumble over each other in the closing minutes of the film do not compensate for the poor quality of what went earlier. Please watch this movie if you've nothing better to do with your time than groan at the cliches that tumble out of this rancid movie. It's so bad, it's just a little bit engaging.