It's the old, old story - boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy wins girl.

And that's about it, really, as this particular story goes.

'Seduced by a Thief' is a caper movie masquerading as a thriller. Unfortunately, despite reasonably earnest attempts by the director and a cast that gets rapidly bored by the whole thing, it turns out to be neither.

A young police recruit, (Rick Peters) moonlights as a security guard in a hotel, and - due to his own ineptness - is duped by a beautiful female jewel thief (Sean Young) and she gets away with a magnificent necklace.

Deciding to redeem himself, he endeavours to track her down and recover the booty, but soon becomes embroiled in a plot to double-cross a renowned jewel-smuggler, Ned Shelly (Edward Albert). The thief, Clare, turns out to be a gemologist with an agenda that includes revenge on the smuggler - the man who set her up as the fall guy in the disposal of some 'hot rocks' a few years previously. She has, of course, emerged from prison a harder, cynical Clare, a woman now well-versed in the breaking-open of safes and the scaling of walls, with a little techno-wizardry thrown in when it comes to security systems.

The plot now begins to twist and turn, and Clare has seen fit to involve a small-time crook called Morgan (Ron Perlman), all New Jersey vowels, gold chains and foul-mouthed snarl. He runs a Pawn Shop where Clare copies the necklace with the intent to triple-cross Shelly, and Morgan happily believes that he is masterminding the whole plot - boy, is he mistaken.

Jake and Clare become romantically involved, but even this is subject to the machinations of the confused script.

Needless to say, the story becomes more and more convoluted, and also involves a cameo by veteran character actor John Saxon as a hard-bitten cop with a penchant for crosswords.

And now things begin to fall apart, with holes in the script appearing left, right and centre. The explanations are made by the extremely irritating addition of voice-overs, taking the easy way out instead of ensuring a decent script in the first place.

Rick Peters does a nice job of Jake, a hero of the tall, dark, handsome and reasonably bright variety, but Sean Young is patently fed-up with the whole thing. Her scenes with the delightfully rude Morgan fail miserably to sparkle, and any chemistry she was supposed to have with Peters, the erstwhile love-interest, is mechanical and cool.

Ron Perlman and Edward Albert (Oddly credited as Edward Laurence Albert) bring some class to the production, and their scenes together are the only highlights of the whole film.

Morgan is portrayed as the epitome of a bottom-of-the-ladder Mafia-type sort of a guy. Ron Perlman's big frame drapes itself about the sets, the succinct New Jersey wise-guy accent delivers some pretty neat one-liners, and he glowers with menace at appropriate moments. Morgan comes across as the only well-rounded character in the piece - a none-to-bright crook with ideas above his station.

Edward Albert's Shelly, in comparison, is a smart, well-dressed businessman-type with a sharp line in suits and a shark-like smile that doesn't reach his eyes. This is a man who goes after the things (and people) he wants and doesn't stop until he gets them - and he doesn't care who he treads neatly underfoot to get them.

Morgan and Shelly's scenes lift the film out of the mire, and the two actors obviously enjoyed working together once more after their tenure in 'Beauty and the Beast' in the late eighties.

'Seduced by a Thief' is worth a look if you haven't much else to do of an evening, and you don't mind putting up with a poor script, annoying soundtrack and a decent cast that was sadly underused. It's not bad, but award material it ain't.