Transit: one long bad idea

Director: Antonio Negret
Starring: Jim Caviezel, Harold Perrineau, James Frain
***

After holding up an armoured truck, a trigger-happy criminal gang is forced to stash its $4 million (Dh14.7m) haul among the belongings of a vacationing family, in this pulpy low-budget thriller.

But just as the crooks' plan to evade the police has unexpected consequences (for them, at least), the attempted holiday-makers also inhabit a world that is more complicated than first thought, with the father Nate (Caviezel) revealed as an ex-con.

It's the kind of story in which nobody ever makes a sensible decision and everyone always says exactly what they're thinking. And yet the film is so straightforward, with its cast delivering every line of hammy dialogue with total dedication, that the end result is surprisingly admirable.