The optics involved in Amazon MGM committing to a film like How to Rob a Bank, especially considering its heightened anti-capitalist rhetoric, while putting an equally candid and probingly topical work (one can assume without having viewed it yet) like Artificial on the open market are considerably weird, at best. If both stood together in an identity contest, the victor would be instantly apparent, and the loser muddled and slightly out of focus. This example, David Leitch’s seventh directorial effort, recently preceded by The Fall Guy and Bullet Train, craves a clear head, open heart, and affinity for cat-and-mouse tales keen to tether to a given formula. This one is no worse for wear when it does, diluting its best ideas right before they break past familiarity and leave with an ample payout. It just misses that mark, and rather frustratingly.
Still, Leitch isn’t the type of filmmaker to cheat worthwhile material that the marketing campaign could make look glittering, and still promise a heady degree of action trickery in its quest to make a valiant statement. If you’ve seen the Now You See Me trilogy, the quest of How to Rob a Bank, and all its mechanics, won’t be anything new, unfortunately. The vibe and swagger, as dictated by screenwriter Mark Bianculli (The Good Neighbor), are roughly the same, regurgitating those tricks and incorporating a pinch of Baby Driver for added measure. None of that bodes too well for this director, stuck in first gear and overthinking everything to where the messaging, and that budding cleverness, fails to stick in the memory too closely.
Like Eisenberg and his crafty horde of magicians whose key knack lay in viral misdirection worthy of page clicks, Ryan Anderson (Nicholas Hoult) is a crafty enough soul to drop the bait and create a movement, while wearing war paint and donning furry mascot heads, with the leader latching onto a “lone wolf” ideal. Alongside wife Emi (Anna Sawai), ex-military bud Vince (Pete Davidson), and their sharp-reflexed video editor Hugo (Rhenzy Feliz), they’re out to document their escapades and turn them into algorithm-testing how-to vids that, through their high production value and adrenaline-laced pacing, keep stacking up views. Behind that media-savvy facade, this team is looking to settle a personal score and launch a crusade for the people. As they plot their most precarious heist, involving trust fund CEO David Walton (Christian Slater) and his tightly sealed vault, the FBI is on their tail, with a wild generational mismatch ready to take down the vlogging heisters. Analogue-leaning Jack West (John C. Reilly) is assigned to Gen Z-age coder Reagan Gardner (Zoe Kravitz) to understand Ryan’s candor, his patterns, and grounds for a slip-up, a gap in their plan.
On screen, these felons’ antics seem bulletproof – with a slick gloss only Adobe Premiere could offer – to mask the turmoil keeping them glued to their online popularity. Bianculli might have the motif down, but not the cohesion, stopping Bank cold on its paper trail while the leads stay prone to capture. All his emotional entry points, which Leitch desperately irons down, grow increasingly jarring in short order. By the time Ryan’s bombastic, riotous finale comes to light, it’s impossible to feel much sympathy for him or his compatriots.
Melding together domestic discord with an urban class movement as the case for anarchy against the 1% registers so weakly in Leitch’s control (co-chaired with editor Elísabet Ronaldsdóttir) that even with a few action beats to serve as knockoff glue, he doesn’t appear like the right fit to helm here. He seems to focus on separate things, leaping to the next and forgetting the scene beforehand. Every moment feels like its own vignette plucked from a different film and cut together like a Frankensteinian mess, or a budget greatest hits mixtape.
That alone is tough to swallow, considering how much upbeat energy and earnest solemnity Hoult pumps into his performance. He proves he can still be genuine and commanding when a director’s approach goes the opposite way, matching a rough contrast of ideals. Among Leitch’s ensemble, he and Reilly (ever the poised intellectual) are perhaps the most invincible. One could go out of their way to care for either of them, considering their overall pedigree. Even that says little if the dots fail to connect around their listless game of cat-and-mouse, weighed down by heavy topics that, while admirable and relevant to convey, enter the picture far too late to matter. That, in turn, affects how much Davidson or Feliz contribute to the story. Let alone Kravitz in her laid-back stoner guise giving Melanie Laurent no run for her money.
The frenetic tempo and over-stylized aesthetic (credited to Jonathan Sela’s still-balanced camera work and David Scheuenemann’s post-modern design template) only lightly smooth over what the script can’t seem to solve, let alone make any remote sense. Too many questions and too few answers plague what should look rather cool and electrifying. The crew’s actual videos that elevate the meaning of excess are often the best-looking portions. A real YouTube or TikTok outlet with this same cache would’ve been more entertaining, free of inconsistent or undercooked drama.
Are they truly criminals? Can they fully speak for economic dismay, if they can’t choose between placid innocence and bold debauchery? None of that feels ever certain in How to Rob a Bank, nor do I feel the viewer may really learn the right tricks if they feel so inclined to create an offshoot like Ryan Anderson would like, and that Leitch could only help paint the picture of, lacking a second pass to catch errant details, or even justify the logic for why this could stay in its current home and not think it wouldn’t provoke, though not in the same way Guadagnino is clearly betting on with his incoming tale of capitalist evolution. With the action-friendly auteur, safe inaction is his plan here, spouting rebellion at a brick wall, and collapsing the valuation on his band of crooks before they can run with the cash. Even if a second viewing could improve its flavor, a few dollars will still be left behind. (5/10)