Thieves and their criminal exploits often make for compelling cinema -- but not in the case of the Hong Kong action/drama A World Without Thieves. Although working with big ambitions and an honorable premise, the execution is almost painfully melodramatic. This film is not that much fun to begin with, plus you're not even sure it knows how to cut loose and have a good time.

Bo (Andy Lau) and Li (Rene Liu) are a couple who've made a living conning their way across the country. But after visiting a Buddhist temple, Li has a change of heart and proposes that the pair start leading an honest life from now on. This puts the woman at odds with her beau after the two encounter Dumbo (Wang Baoqiang), an extremely wide-eyed country kid traveling by train to start a new life -- with a boatload of cash on his person. Li wants to protect Dumbo and ensure a safe passage for him, while Bo sees nothing but yen in his eyes and tries working behind his girlfriend's back to abscond with the cash himself. However, Bo's not the only one with his sights on Dumbo's money: pickpocket mastermind Uncle Li (Ge You) and his crew are also on the train, and they see the kid as an innocent lamb just begging to be robbed.

Despite all the double-crossings and sleight-of-hand trickery taking place in  A World Without Thieves, the film itself actually includes some rather simple but  effective ideas. The story raises intriguing points about the nature of a thief, especially in how it discusses who's more to blame for a heist: the perpetrator or the incredibly naive victim like Dumbo, a person who all but carries around a neon sign saying "PLEASE ROB ME!"

An interesting angle is also introduced in the form of Li's sort of born-again Buddhism, with such ideas as karma affecting her decision to abandon her thieving ways while she still can. When setting its mind to it, A World Without Thieves proves very thematically nimble, keeping viewers on their toes with a combination of philosophy and good old-fashioned con artist movie theatrics.

Writer/director Feng Xiaogang serves up a couple of those wily sequences which make movies like this so enjoyable. The more morally-shifty characters do what they do best in such highlights as when Bo uses a hidden razor to help pick pockets at a temple and in a scene featuring Uncle Li's femme fatale protege (Li Bingbing) trying to make a grab for Dumbo's savings.

Still, these instances are too few and far between here.  Filling in the remainder of the running time is a wildly inconsistent script, which gives viewers a rousing heist sequence one second, then the next thing you know, two of the characters are engaging in some bizarre, slo-mo martial arts routine, backed up by a score that sounds borrowed from an Almodovar film.

Xiogang doesn't display a steady hand in dealing with the introspective nature of the story, and the  simultaneous condemnation and glorification of thiefdom comes across as more than a little uneasy, not to mention a lot of hollow, repetitive dialogue coming from Bo. The whole story seems way too melodramatic for its own good, with the astoundingly weepy score inspiring many a chuckle. And, the ending twist requires an investment in the characters which you never get around to forming. The acting is equally as mixed, with decent enough performances delivered by Lau and Liu. But, on the downside, You makes a fairly drab villain, and Baoqiang appears  waaaaay too green, even for a movie character.

I appreciate A World Without Thieves for not settling into the sort of predictable rut of most action films.  There's a little more thought going on here than in anything with Steven Seagal's name topping the bill, but in the end, good intentions are all that seem to be fueling this mildly disappointing movie.

MY RATING: ** (out of ****)

(Released by Tartan Video; not rated by MPAA.)