New This Week
Critics & Publications
Archives: A-Z Index
Advanced Search

Upcoming Release Calendar
Awards & Bests By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

sort by name

sort by score

63 11th Hour, The
47 27 Dresses
29 Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem
39 Alvin and the Chipmunks
81 Bamako
84 Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
47 Bella
68 Business of Being Born, The
69 Charlie Wilson's War
64 Cloverfield
30 Cover
68 Delirious
92 Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The
43 Final Season, The
41 First Sunday
51 Golden Compass, The
49 Good Night, The
65 Great Debaters, The
63 Hannah Takes the Stairs
52 Hollywood Dreams
7 Hottie and the Nottie, The
60 I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With
15 In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale
81 Juno
70 Lars and the Real Girl
47 Lions for Lambs
41 Mad Money
71 Manda Bala (Send a Bullet)
xx Moondance Alexander
53 Music Within
77 Nanking
44 Nina's Heavenly Delights
24 One Missed Call
74 Orphanage, The
30 Over Her Dead Body
39 P.S. I Love You
37 P2
46 Reservation Road
55 Resurrecting the Champ
57 Romulus, My Father
85 Savages, The
78 Starting Out in the Evening
83 Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
57 Teeth
92 There Will Be Blood
38 Trailer Park Boys: The Movie
32 Untraceable
63 Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
68 War Dance
71 Water Horse: Legend of the Deep, The
43 Youth Without Youth

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Plunkett & Macleane
Gramercy Pictures


9.6

based on 27 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 6 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: R for some strong violence, sexuality and language

Starring Jonny Lee Miller, Robert Carlyle, Iain Robertson, and Liv Tyler

Plunkett (Carlyle) is a highwayman who's partner is killed by the evil Chance. He soon hooks up with disgraced gentleman soldier Captain MacCleane (Miller) to continue infiltrate wealthy society in order to rob the rich and fund his move to America. MacCleane falls in love with Lady Rebecca Gibson (Tyler), pushing the partners' daring and loyalty to the limit.

GENRE(S):	Drama
WRITTEN BY:	Selwyn Roberts Robert Wade Neal Purvis Charles McKeown
DIRECTED BY:	Jake Scott
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: March 21, 2000 Video: March 21, 2000 Theatrical: October 1, 1999
RUNNING TIME:	102 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	UK / Czech Republic

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

Lewd, crude and occasionally too brutal to take, it's also gorgeous, heartfelt.

Newsweek Louise Rosen

A highly entertaining movie in a genre that is often as stiff as the Lady Gibson's boning.

Mr. Showbiz Kevin Maynard

A cross between a Hogarth painting and an MTV video, Plunkett & Macleane cuts quite a swath.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

Scott makes it easy to overlook the conventionality beneath his sometimes overdone but almost always enjoyable combination of atmosphere and propulsiveness.

Baltimore Sun Milton Kent

Too much fun to ignore.

Miami Herald Curtis Morgan

A tad too raunchy for its own good.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

It's vulgar, to be sure, but it's also brash and invigorating.

Chicago Reader Lisa Alspector

This buddy movie grows on you.

Dallas Observer Andy Klein

Its greatest flaw is the casting of Miller ("Trainspotting," "Hackers"), who continues to have virtually no screen presence...For all that, Plunkett & Macleane is fun.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

The whole thing seems to have been faked up for our amusement, like a circus freak show.

Philadelphia Inquirer Desmond Ryan

Cheerful mishmash.

USA Today Mike Clark

The plunk-ing of a rap/disco soundtrack onto a movie about debtors' prisons and 18th century British highwaymen?

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Its noisily inappropriate pop-rock score overwhelms its meager subplots about British class conflict.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

None of it adds up to terribly much beyond a rip-roaring adventure that shows off Carlyle and Miller as cynical British city cousins of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Paula Nechak

There's not an original idea rattling around in the empty-headed but gorgeous-to-behold period film.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Watchable in a facile, trashy way. Unfortunately, most of the movie is mired in sludge, slime, mud, blood, and studiously dank cinematography.

Film.com Gemma Files

It doesn't really hang together. And waaay too much style. Pity.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Rollicking is the term that best sums up Plunkett and Macleane, not in itself a bad thing, just, I think, not a very good thing.

Chicago Tribune Barbara Shulgasser

Scott treats the material as if it were grist for a 30-second spot or a rowdy music video.

New York Post Jonathan Foreman

A noisy, amateurish mess that doesn't work on any level - an extended, clich-ridden MTV video set to anachronistic bad music.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

A film overgrown with so many directorial flourishes that the heroes need machetes to hack their way to within view of the audience.

Village Voice Gary Daupin

The script is as full of holes as some of the highwaymen's bullet-riddled victims -- why not throw a drum-and-bass track over everything?

Washington Post Desson Thomson

No darn good.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

An ugly, stupid movie it turned out to be. Incoherent, arbitrary, hyperactive and dark enough to make you fear you've gone blind.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

A repellent, stupid film.

Los Angeles Times Jan Stewart

Everything is stunningly photographed by John Mathieson, but to paraphrase Gertrude Stein, a cockroach is a cockroach is a cockroach.

TNT RoughCut Daysun Chang

An empty void of tasteless action, formula plot, and dull dialogue set in a sadly under-utilized time period.

The average user rating for this movie is 9.6 (out of 10) based on 6 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Piret gave it a9:
Have watched it twice and will watch again. Soundtrack very good!

Jack R. gave it a 10:
It's got all the balls in it's oversized sac. A bloody excellent movie! And if anyone disagrees, send them round, I'll show them the meaning of stand and deliver.

Eddie Q. gave it a 10:
Simple plot with a great sound track. Love the time period.

Discuss this movie in our forums

Return to top of page

Plunkett & Macleane Gramercy Pictures

Plunkett & Macleane
Gramercy Pictures