7MMO
Moderator
How to Rob a Bank is in theaters beginning November 13.
Clearly, we live in notably crappy times in numerous ways, and clearly, there’s a lot to be fed up with about how the system seems so egregiously stacked against most of us while the rich constantly get richer. So sure, it’s good to have a big studio movie at least attempt to tackle these issues, but How to Rob a Bank never actually has enough to say about the topic except for reinforcing that yeah, this sucks, but hey, at least you can make some fun videos about it.
Nicholas Hoult stars as Ryan, the leader of a group of masked bank robbers who release elaborate videos of their crimes on the internet and have become online sensations as a result. Also filming rehearsed monologues to camera and tutorials on how to emulate their actions — titled, you guessed it, How to Rob a Bank — Ryan and his crew, which includes Emi (Anna Sawai), Vince (Pete Davidson), and Hugo (Rhenzy Feliz), make it clear in their videos that this is all about sticking it to ‘The Man’ and striking back against a world that’s made it so hard to get a financial foothold.
I have no doubt that people posting videos of themselves successfully carrying out a string of bank robberies would go viral, and yet How to Rob a Bank feels wonky from the start because of how overproduced and outright annoying these videos are. They’re filled with animation overlays, loud sound effects, and blaring music in what feels more like Hollywood filmmakers trying to evoke youthful, attention-getting videos rather than coming off as genuine. It doesn’t help that director David Leitch (Deadpool 2, The Fall Guy) sometimes also has this crew do impressive parkour-style flips in the midst of their heists and then gives zero explanation of how this would even be something in their skill set.
John C. Reilly plays FBI Agent West, the guy trying to bring in Ryan’s crew. He ends up recruiting the services of Reagan (Zoë Kravitz), who’s on home arrest after having been convicted of cybercrimes and whose knowledge, West believes, might be useful in tracking down the robbers. Reilly and Kravitz, and the very different energy they bring, actually make for a rather fun unlikely duo, and there are times where I found myself wishing we simply had a mismatched buddy cop-style adventure with them. But ultimately, both of their characters represent how How to Rob a Bank doesn’t follow through on many of the topics it’s bringing up.
Reagan is as anti-establishment as they come, clumsily represented by the stickers on her laptop that look like a checklist of progressive cause catchphrases, while FBI careerman West is very much part of the system. Reagan is also one of the ways the movie name-drops additional troubling and agonizing topics of the moment, from violent cops to school shootings, but even as the two inevitably start to begrudgingly get along, we don’t see either of them actually learn or change all that much in the movie. You might think there could be some drama in Reagan feeling empathy for Ryan’s crew — maybe even trying to help them from the inside — or that they could explore how West feels about being part of a system that can be used for corrupt purposes. But Leitch and writer Mark Bianculli never dig in enough to get more than surface level acknowledgement of anything of the sort.
This goes for the How to Rob a Bank crew as well, who are presented initially as a jovial, fun-loving team and each given a requisite single scene of their home life to try to ground them, with mixed results. Well, that’s except for two other guys in the group beyond the core four, who are so underutilized and often forgotten, it’s bizarre they’re included at all.
It feels a bit, ahem, rich to have a story about financial inequality coming from Jeff Bezos’ Amazon.
Inevitably, the movie takes the turn any story about a group of criminals must take, as the walls begin closing in on our modern day Robin Hoods (who do in fact give much of their stolen money to charity). There are a couple of late reveals about what motivates some of the crew — and how it impacts their past and future — that do carry some emotional weight, but those reveals are held off for too long, and the movie feels paper-thin for too much of its running time. And though they lead into a notably darker portion for a bit, even that feels pushed to the side by the conclusion, as though either the filmmakers or the studio (and yeah, it feels a bit, ahem, rich to have a story about financial inequality coming from Jeff Bezos’ Amazon) were afraid to leave things on too complicated a note.
There are times when you can enjoy the antics of How to Rob a Bank, helped along by its charismatic cast, and there are a couple of moments that shine, including a sequence where we see how the crew deals with being questioned by the cops which features a fun appearance by Young Mazino (Beef, The Last of Us) as their lawyer. We also briefly get moments where actors like Hoult and Sawai remind us that they can be dramatic heavyweights, but too much of the film feels like it’s mistaking loud and frenetic for making an impact as it lightly touches on important topics without actually doing the work to make them resonate.
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