Brian: You call this going straight?
Brian Hope and Charlie McManus are two gangsters unhappy with their new boss. But their new boss has also made it clear that death is the only way out, and they wisely deduce he is going to kill them anyway. So they decide to take for themselves the money they steal in their latest job, and run off.
But Brian forgot to fill up the tank enough to get to the airport, so they are forced to hide the money, and themselves, for the time being... and the closest place is a nunnery. So they temporarily become Sister Inviolata of the Immaculate Conception and Sister Euphemianote of the Five Wounds, while trying to find a way to get out of the country safely, and deal with Faith, Brian's girlfriend who witnessed their crime.
This 1990 comedy was directed by Jonathan Lynn and stars Robbie Coltrane and Eric Idle. It was the last film produced by George Harrison's Handmade Films.
"Tropes on the Run":
- Church Going Villain: Charlie is a practicing Catholic and a low-level member in a criminal organization.
- Double Entendre: Several, including the above quote.
- Extended Disarming: There's a scene where Eric Idle's cohorts meet with some Japanese Yakuza types. The cohorts demand the Yakuza remove all their weapons, and so they collectively produce a small pile of knives, cleavers and machetes. One Brit motions with his gun and says something like "Come on, let's have the rest," whereafter they add about twice as many more blades.
- Fanservice:
- The shower scene.
- Also a scene where a police officer, convinced that he is facing a man dressed up as a nun, forcefully pulls off the nun's clothes... only to discover that it is in fact a woman who has been dressed up as a nun. A woman who is herself not a nun, and who also happens to be wearing some very skimpy black underwear.
- Genre Throwback: The film was meant to be a throwback to the Ealing comedies of the 1950s.
- Lampshade Hanging: To the silliness of the plot, in prayer form.Sister Superior: My Lord, thou hast always moved in mysterious ways thy wonders to perform, but this latest wonder takes some beating even from you.
- Larynx Dissonance: Brian and Charlie don't even attempt convincing female voices.
- London Gangster: The main characters want to leave their gang after their new boss turns out to be too much like this.
- Resignations Not Accepted: At least not without spending a couple weeks crossdressing and then outrunning your boss to get to the airport.
- The Triads and the Tongs: Who they steal the money from.
