Dour Caper BELLMAN AND TRUE

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

The best description of Bellman and True is an oxymoron: it is, of all things, a dour caper. That is, a usually merry cinematic enterprise -- the one in which a group of swagmen laugh all the way to the supposedly impenetrable bank vault from which they intend to extract millions -- is shown with brutal realism.

Such a stroke of honesty is alone enough to commend this good little British picture. But it is almost the least of its virtues. The mobsters force an alcoholic computer engineer named Hiller (played with a wonderfully watery passivity by Bernard Hill) to act as their "bellman," or alarm-system neutralizer. His only virtue is his devotion to his stepson (Kieran O'Brien), who has no name but the one we impute to him: True. He is a wise, sober child, spunky and devoted to the man who takes responsibility for him when both are deserted by the child's mother.

Hiller concocts elaborate electronic toys to amuse the boy and an equally complex running fairy tale to divert him from his loss. Their unsentimental relationship is developed with a clarity that makes a shining contrast with the instinctive violence of their criminal associates and the devilish complexity of the heist. Hiller's contributions to the proceedings are as witty as the toys he builds for True, and the denouement of the whole tale is gratifying. But it is constant, often startling, shifts in the film's emotional tone, the economy of its writing and its lively movement through the - bleak London landscape that lend it true distinction. -- R.S.