Wilson stars as Jack Ryan, an affable thief whose specialty is "b and e": breaking and entering. As the film begins, Jack has decided to go straight by working construction for crooked real estate developer Ray Ritchie (Sinise). But somehow, trouble just seems to find its way to Jack, who uses a Louisville slugger to settle an argument with Ritchie's bully of a foreman (Vinnie Jones). Told to get off the island by Ritchie's obsequious right-hand man Bob Jr. (Charlie Sheen), Jack blithely ignores Bob Jr. and goes to work as a handyman for North Shore District Judge Walter Crewes (Freeman). Trouble again rears its head in the slinky form of Ritchie's scheming mistress Nancy Hayes (newcomer Sara Foster). True to form, Jack ignores Walter's warnings about Nancy to flirt with the bikini-clad blonde, who wants to use his talents to steal $200,000 from Ritchie's hunting lodge. Well aware that she's playing him, Jack nonetheless considers her offer to pull off the biggest heist of his career.

A breezily entertaining diversion, The Big Bounce is a modest effort that sometimes plays like an extended travelogue. Armitage (Grosse Point Blank) and his cinematographer Jeffrey L. Kimball seem overly taken with the beauty of Oahu's North Shore. They punctuate the story with frequent shots of surfers riding the waves to the strains of George S. Clinton's Hawaiian-themed score. While these images are dazzling, they do little to advance the story or flesh out the characters. In fact, they feel more like padding than anything else, as if Armitage felt he didn't have enough material for a feature-length film. The movie would also be a lot tighter if Armitage had spent the time fine-tuning Sebastian Gutierrez' script, which gets a little muddled towards the end as everyone double-crosses each other.

For all its flaws, however, The Big Bounce shows that Wilson has the stuff to carry a movie. The laid-back actor-writer (he co-wrote The Royal Tenenbaums and Rushmore with college buddy Wes Anderson) has usually played the drawling comic sidekick in films like Zoolander (2002) and Shanghai Noon (2000). In The Big Bounce, he strolls through the movie with good-natured ease, unruffled by the rampant scheming of the other characters.

The Big Bounce is only the third film Armitage has directed since 1990's Miami Blues, a tough little B-movie gem starring Alec Baldwin and Fred Ward. Although it lacks the flair and edgy wit of Miami Blues, The Big Bounce is an unpretentious and funny caper comedy that gives you far more bang for your buck than most of the dreck currently playing at the neighborhood multiplex.