All Matty Demaret (Barry Pepper) wants is acceptance. His mafia-boss father rejects him as a weakling, and polite society won't have him either. So it is not surprising when Matty jumps at the opportunity when he finally gets a chance to prove himself to his dad. The job is pretty simple-he delegates the shuttling of a bag full of cash across the country to his friend Johnny Marbles. Gathering together a group of his friends (all of whom are the offspring of unsuccessful mobsters), Matty leaves Brooklyn and heads out to Wibaux, Mont. to save the situation (and his own hide).

Along with close friend Chris Scarpa (Andrew Davoli), muscle-man/body-guard Taylor Reese (Vin Deisel), and the disgraced Marbles (Seth Green) who always manages to mess things up, Matty sets out to turn Wibaux on its head, hoping that the cash will come tumbling out of its pockets. On the ride from the airport into town one of the crew says confidently, "Guys like us, we could be running this town in a week."

Unfortunately, there is no Michael Corleone in this group. Even with wads of hundred dollar bills and nice leather jackets, it turns out the guys can't manage Wibaux, let alone New York City. The corrupt Sheriff Decker and his sidekick prove to be their match, and before long Benny Chains (Dennis Hopper) has to send out his right hand man, Teddy Deserve (John Malkovich), to straighten things out.

"Knockaround Guys" commits the cardinal sin of taking itself too seriously. The most successful shoot-em-up movies are the ones that go through the motions with half a smile peeking through their bloodied faces. People go to action films to be entertained, not for some profound artistic experience, and it is much more entertaining to watch people having fun. But directors David Levien and Brian Koppelman approach the enterprise too earnestly, and nearly the whole cast looks like it is laboring far too hard. The lone exception is Malkovich, who has a great time in his bad-guy role and uses his amazing talent for line delivery to make even the worst bits of dialogue memorable.

Indeed, the only thing that keeps the movie watchable is the acting. While Malkovich is the cream of the crop, all the roles are filled by charismatic actors who do their best to fill out one-dimensional caricatures. Veteran performer Hopper is fun to watch as the old mobster Chains, and Vin Deisel brings his gravelly voice and considerable screen presence to the role of the street fighting Reese.

The plot of the movie is so simple and predictable that you could doze off for 10 minutes and still have a pretty good sense of what is going on when you woke up. The twist at the end does provide a little surprise-and a lot of frustration at its complete implausibility. After a good surprise ending, a viewer should be able to think back through the film and notice the clues that he didn't see before, but in "Knockaround Guys" the writers didn't bother to plant any evidence. It feels as though the final revelation was tacked on after the script was finished, and nobody took the time to make the rest of the script consistent.

The concise 90-minute movie seems to be going out of fashion these days, but "Knockaround Guys" is, mercifully, a throwback to an earlier era. After making a movie that doesn't do much else right, directors Levien and Koppelman had the decency to keep the action moving briskly and spare the audience the multiple endings and extended melodrama that are the hallmark of bad action movies.

"Knockaround Guys" was never destined for greatness, but given the talented group of actors that was gathered, the weak plot and uninspired direction make this movie particularly disappointing.