This is a reasonably diverting heist movie apparently based on a true story that suffers from a somewhat insipid lead and some poorly sketched characters. Francis Huster plays Albert Spaggiari, camera shop owner and professional villain, who hatches a plot to relieve a bank of the contents of 4,000 of its deposit boxes over one weekend by tunnelling through the sewers to reach the vault. Sadly for Huster, he is unable to lay his hands on the laser he requires and has to make do with welding gear so that he only manages to loot around 300 boxes, which are filled with all manner of booty from gold bars to compromising photographs.
Security has become so sophisticated these days that it's now unlikely that anyone would be able to rob a bank in such a manner. Perhaps that means the bank heist genre is fated to become something of a period piece as we move away from the 20th century and towards a plastic credit society. Watching some lone hacker hunched over his PC as he siphons funds from some electronic account on the other side of the world just doesn't have the same air of derring-do as these traditional techniques.
Half the fun of these films is watching how the plan unravels usually after the robbers believe they have got away with their swag but with this film the capture of Spaggiari is somewhat banal although I can't imagine any police force in the western world securing a conviction by spiking their suspect's coffee with drugs.
A decent time-filler, then, but not a film that ranks amongst the best of heist movies.
Security has become so sophisticated these days that it's now unlikely that anyone would be able to rob a bank in such a manner. Perhaps that means the bank heist genre is fated to become something of a period piece as we move away from the 20th century and towards a plastic credit society. Watching some lone hacker hunched over his PC as he siphons funds from some electronic account on the other side of the world just doesn't have the same air of derring-do as these traditional techniques.
Half the fun of these films is watching how the plan unravels usually after the robbers believe they have got away with their swag but with this film the capture of Spaggiari is somewhat banal although I can't imagine any police force in the western world securing a conviction by spiking their suspect's coffee with drugs.
A decent time-filler, then, but not a film that ranks amongst the best of heist movies.