AFTER the sun set prematurely on his licence to kill, Pierce Brosnan has swapped James Bond for diamond thief Max Burdett.

His twinkling Irish eyes are drawn - and yours will be too - to the oft-exposed cleavage of Salma Hayek, his hot-to-trot partner in paradise retirement, but he can't resist temptation to play away one more time.

The object of his desire is not Hayek's Lola, utterly butterly in her bikini and skimpy dresses as she goes about her daily business of yoga exercises and painting the deck, but a diamond that will be in the Bahamas for only a week.

Max's life of luxury and leisure is further disrupted by the intrusion of island mobster Don Cheadle (deeply irritating) and in particular the arrival of his nemesis, FBI agent Stan Lloyd (Woody Harrelson), who warns him not to steal the aforementioned jewel on show in a cruise ship, giving him all the red rag to a bull he needs.

So begins a fractious, bluffing partnership in the style of Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin in the far superior Midnight Run, or in truth more in keeping with director Brett Ratner's earlier capers, Rush Hour and Rush Hour 2.

Brosnan, rugged, hairy and his beard flecked with grey, gets to compete with the younger, trimmer, hairless Harrelson, in stripping off shirts, and they end up in an awkward bed scene where the comic timing is just that little bit awry, like a fake watch.

Brosnan twirls his soft Irish accent and can still pull off the suave charm, but he is strangely off key with the dialogue, failing to match his performance in another heist movie, 1999's The Thomas Crown Affair, while Harrelson has fun but not enough.

Perhaps a marriage of Ratner and jewellery could never be anything but c**p. The locations are jealousy inducing, the sun and sea are the stuff of a brochure, and Hayek is deliciously diverting, but After The Sunset is too slow-witted and too much a copy of myriad movie styles. A heist, a bust, but not a blast.

Updated: 09:41 Friday, November 19, 2004