There’s a lot of fun and satisfaction to be had in David Leitch’s flashy, influencer-era, anti-capitalist actione How to Rob a Bank but you kinda need to come to peace with a few things, first. It’s a film that strives so hard to be culturally relevant, and let’s be honest that there’s no better time than now for anything that screams “eat the rich”, that it goes overboard with annoying stylistic flourishes that become more of a distraction. I want the revolution to be televised, streamed, TikTok’ed as much as the next guy, but there are limits. That said, the kinetic, street art-influenced, stunt-racing heist flick trusts its audience enough to look past the digital gloss to see the old school crime caper tucked away like blue dye in a satchel of stolen money.
This trust in the audience is crucial to the movie’s “power to the people” theme. Nicholas Hoult’s Ryan aka The Wolf, asks his millions of social media followers “You know what’s more powerful than a gun? An Audience.” Ryan and his crew at the “Who’s Hungry?” YouTube account are fifteen successful bank robberies deep when the movie starts, and with their splashy How-To videos, walkthroughs, and tutorials breaking down the many ways we are getting scammed by the rich, their follower count is growing by leaps and bounds. This has flummoxed vintage FBI Agent West (John C. Reilly) who, naturally, is THIS CLOSE to retirement, but can’t figure out these thieves and why they’re so popular, why they’re being compared to Robin Hood, and most of all, can’t figure out why they can’t be tracked even though they post literally everything online. Since classic FBI techniques ain’t workin’ against these guys, West has a big brain moment and recruits a hacker, Regan Gardner (Zoe Kravitz), on house arrest for creating a digital tracker to keep tabs on her ex. He doesn’t care that she’s always stoned, only that her software could be used to track The Wolf and his fellow Merry Men.
Merry Men and one Woman, that is. The best stuff in How to Rob a Bank is in the early going. The louder, the more brash and brazen it gets, the better. I don’t know about you, but the best heist movies are about the planning of the big steal, especially when detailed enough that they start to feel like a suggestion that “Hey, you could do this, too.” The Wolf definitely fills your head with plenty of ideas about why it makes more sense, numerically speaking, to rob banks than to try and own your own home, or work in hopes of earning a six-figure salary. You have a better shot at getting away with a bank robbery than achieving any of those things, so why not? Leitch, the Deadpool 2 and Bullet Train director who had never previously known the meaning of restraint, pushes the decorative mayhem to the absolute limit then does something unexpected: he dials it back.k
The second half of How to Rob a Bank is compelling in a more traditional cat-and-mouse sense, although the rapidity in which the tone shifts from digital to analog is jarring. It’s here that we learn more about Ryan’s crew, such as Pete Davidson as his former military buddy Vince, returned home from war to face disrespect and a crappy healthcare system. There’s also Anna Sawai as Ryan’s girlfriend, Emi, and the tragic backstory that led them to becoming masked bank robbers in the first place. Penguin and Runaways actor Rhenzy Feliz is Hugo, the crew’s social media guru whose financial troubles seem like small potatoes to the rest of the team, and thus are given short shrift. I also quite enjoyed the presence of Christian Slater as Walton, a bank manager so slimy and elitist he’s like if Slater’s character from Heathers suddenly went pro-MAGA. The film doesn’t necessarily need an actual villain, it actually dilutes the message to have one, but at the same time, Slater just has a face you want to see behind prison bars, so it works.
With the action slowed to more of a crawl, Reilly and Kravitz’s old school/new school dynamic takes center stage. West is grappling with a justice system he’s sworn to but seems woefully inadequate, while the next generation is forging something new that he doesn’t understand. Reagan is so much of a mouthpiece for The Wolf that we suspect her of being an insider, but she sorta fades into the background, becoming like someone trying to teach grandpa how to use the TV remote. Reilly has the haggard cop bit down pat, and few can play disaffected youth as well as Kravitz at this point.
For all of the chaos and noise, How to Rob a Bank is effective with without them. But it definitely packs a harder punch the more fiery its rage against the machine.
How to Rob a Bank opens on November 13th.
