Who doesn’t love a heist movie? There’s just something so thrilling about them to ‘normal’ people who wouldn’t even dream of doing things such as robbing banks.
I mean, think about Ocean’s Eleven. What a brilliant, exciting, intensely nerve-wracking movie. When reading the synopsis to Heist, it all sounds vaguely similar to that of the Steven Soderbergh classic, so why wouldn’t I want to give it a go?
See for yourself:
Based on a true story, Vault is set on a 1975 robbery in which a group of small time criminals hatched a plan to steal $30 million from the mafia in Rhode Island. At the time, this was one of the largest sums ever to be stolen in history, so it seems like a pretty cool thing to base a movie on, right?
Wrong.
This is, simply put, an awful movie.
Sometimes a true story has to contain some untruths to make it interesting… unfortunately this movie forgets about that and the first hour is tedious as hell. To be quite honest, the second half is just as tedious. That’s how bad it is.
The cast themselves do their best with the snooze fest material that they are given, but why even take this movie in the first place? If this script landed in front of me, I’m not sure what on earth would possess me to say yes to it. Despite this, Samira Wiley actually gives a really good performance in the small role she has. Perhaps if she’d been in more scenes with Don Johnson it would be more interesting, as they are clearly the two best actors in this entire mess.
It’s like the makers of this movie forgot to use any type of artistic licence. The whole thing is void of creativity, like why not give it a 70s filter or something instead of just relying on poor wigs? (After suggesting this, one annoying person told me that a 70s filter would be ‘disgusting’ and they should have shot it on film. In my opinion, this movie isn’t worth the hypothetical film it would live on, so that would be a waste). It’s the most basic, one trick pony movie I’ve seen all year out of 173 films, and the trick it does have – the heist itself – is a poor one at that.
My original notes for this movie included ”Heist? What heist? Blink and you’ll miss it”. I only watched this movie 4 days ago, and I can’t even remember a heist occurring. Remember those scenes in Ocean’s that were all about planning the robbery, assembling a gang of experts to do so, and then showing us how their scheme played out? There’s literally none of that. After some empty, vapid backstory of the main character (played by Theo Rossi from Sons of Anarchy) in which we meet his mother, the heist was over before I knew it. For a movie that lasts a little under 100 minutes, there’s very little plot, that’s for sure.
Basically, I’ve given this movie its singular Q purely because of Samira Wiley, and the beautiful cars that are in it. That yellow chevy? What I would give for that hunk of American muscle.
Whatever you do, don’t watch this movie, no matter how much time you’ve got to kill. It’s 99 minutes of your life you’ll never get back.
Vault is available on Sky Cinema in the UK, but I told you not to watch it so that’s some pointless information right there.
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