How To Rob A Bank – Movie Review
Stuntman-turned-filmmaker David Leitch’s filmography in the last few years has honed in on two things – cinematic celebrations of the stuntworkers behind some of the decade’s most bombastic action setpieces, and the return of the “fun” blockbuster. While his directing career started out with sheer intensity of movies like John Wick and Atomic Blonde (still fun in their own way), Leitch’s last few films such as Deadpool 2, The Fall Guy, and his latest How To Rob A Bank, have leaned into a more stylistic, heightened, genre-blending vibe that makes for some very entertaining movies, even if they are more style than substance.
How To Rob A Bank is a Robin Hood-esque tale about a highly-trained crew, led by The Wolf (Nicholas Hoult), who have been on a tear of late robbing banks while growing an immense social media following as the film and post their exploits through hyper-stylised videos explaining how and why they commit these robberies. Unable to track anything about this crew, veteran FBI agent John West (John C. Reilly) teams up with an unlikely ally in hacker Reagan (Zoe Kravitz) to take The Wolf and his gang down.
Leitch injects a lot of energy and style into this film, especially in the wild YouTube videos that showcase titular How To guides on robbing banks. Occasionally, movies can try and lean into the “Gen-Z” internet culture, but feel incredibly out of touch. The style and frenetic energy of the YouTube videos feels authentic and is incredibly fun! The use of GoPro’s and 360 cameras also add a new visual aesthetic to the robbery scenes themselves, showing that Leitch is constantly interested in evolving how action is filmed and presented. While there could have been more robbery scenes in the film itself, Leitch also injects some signature manoeuvres with car chases and shootouts that also highlight the incredible stuntwork that the team at 87North continue to bring to screens.
The Robin Hood-ness of this film is part of that substance that is explained, but not overly explored. The Wolf steals from the banks and takes a fair share of the insured cash for himself and his crew, but one of their non-negotiables is to give money back to communities and charities who need it the most (or who have been screwed over by the rich). As the film goes on and the story attempts to delve deeper into The Wolf’s backstory about dealing with a predatory loan that bankrupted his family, leading to an immense tragedy, or Pete Davidson’s Vince who is dealing with mounting medical bills, their motives fuel their “crimes”. While there are definitely emotional beats within these character arcs that do hit (and also showcase an surprisingly impressive performance from Davidson himself), they also hinder the film’s pacing as they are so tonally drastically different from the action.
The film also tries to throw a little bit of moral complexity in through FBI agent John West, who struggles with the back-and-forth of being a loyal law enforcer who is apart of a broken system, and who is also sympathetic to The Wolf’s motives. By teaming West up with Reagan, someone who is under house arrest for her hacking program, also challenges West’s beliefs in what justice truly is and who the real villains are. The chemistry between Reilly and Kravitz also lends to a fun “buddy-cop” feeling to the film that doesn’t feel forced. However, the relevance of Reagan as a character outside of being the person who created the hacking software needed to track down The Wolf is questionable narratively, but the performance from Kravitz makes up for this.
How to Rob a Bank is a stylish and energetic flick from David Leitch, led by strong and surprising performances. However, like most of Leitch’s work, the substance, pacing, and length of the film suffers under the stylistic aspects.
How to Rob a Bank is in Australian cinemas November 12
