A fitfully amusing mismatched-buddy action comedy straight out of the 1980s, “Drive Hard” stars Thomas Jane as a woebegone ex-race-car driver who, in his new capacity as a driving instructor, finds himself the unwilling accomplice of a bank robber (John Cusack).

Simon Keller (Cusack) casually robs a mobbed-up bank of $9 million in bearer bonds, then, at gunpoint, forces his disbelieving teacher (Jane has some very funny moments) to use his long-dormant driving skills to escape the assassins who give chase.

The Australian movie doesn’t exactly work up a sweat devising an interesting plot villains, but the badinage between the odd couple — Jane’s character frantic and quavering, Cusack’s sunny but lethal — makes the time pass painlessly enough.