These Bank Robbers Want You to Watch
Getting away with the money sounds like a perfectly adequate ambition. The crew in How to Rob a Bank wants an audience too. They broadcast their robberies, and their growing fame draws the attention of an FBI agent and a software engineer. That is a neat complication for a heist movie: the thing that makes you feel powerful also makes you easier to find.
The film opens in US and UK theaters on November 13. The premise is a good reason to keep it on the calendar, especially if you like a criminal crew whose worst enemy might be its own appetite.
Cast member Anna Sawai told Marie Claire:
That thought sits nicely beside a story about criminals cultivating an audience. Getting attention and getting away are competing ambitions. An impressive exit might be a terrible escape route. A partner who wants to stop could be a nuisance to someone desperate for another performance.
Those are the possibilities that make this premise worth a look. The official synopsis has the crew pushing toward its biggest heist while the pursuit closes in. I am more interested in the bad decisions that get them there than in a lecture about social media.
The risk is that broadcasting the crimes becomes a decorative gimmick, something to flash on a phone between action scenes. The better film would make the audience part of the danger. Once people are watching, even a sensible decision can start to feel like an embarrassment.
Put How to Rob a Bank on your November 13 cinema shortlist if you like heists complicated by their own crew. Money is an understandable reason to do something stupid. Wanting strangers to applaud it should give us something to talk about on the way home.
