Watched this in four installments, which has more to do with the shape of my weekday evenings than the pacing, but it also made me think about how this could have been a longer work — I wish we got more time with Halle Berry’s Sharon, who emerged as the most interesting character from this surprisingly stacked cast (hi Jennifer Jason Leigh!).
Borrows the bones of Michael Mann’s style — the story, the setting, the electronic score — but lacks the doomed romanticism that is the beating heart animating those things in Mann’s best work. There is no “time is luck” here, only luck, and the too-neat ending undercuts the desperation and hunger that the first two-thirds of the movie tries to evoke.
Taps into some of the working-man’s rage that fueled Mann’s Thief, but if in Thief you see James Caan’s Frank operating with a team (and maybe even organizing a safecracker’s union), here Hemsworth’s Mike is firmly in the neoliberal gig economy churn, isolated and with nobody to watch his back.
A key moment in the story requires the viewer to accept that Halle Berry is not still the most luminous human in any given room. It’s a testament to her acting ability that I eventually allowed it, even though it momentarily shattered the film’s reality.
Still: despite giving off “too-eager student of the master” vibes, I enjoyed it and have plenty of time for heist movies.
Random thought: Is that a Gattaca homage in one of the first scenes?