Since 1992
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Army of Thieves
(Netflix)
By Lucas Allen
Last May, director Zack Snyder unleashed his vision of the zombie apocalypse in the entertaining “Army of the Dead,” starring Dave Bautista. Its success quickly paves the way for a world-building universe with an upcoming sequel ‘Planet of the Dead’ and an animated series. But the first film out of the gate is “Army of Thieves,” which acts as both a prequel for one of the first film’s more likable characters.
While the zombie outbreak has already started in America, the movie begins in Germany, where Ludwig (Matthias Schweighofer, who also directed) works a boring job in the bank while trying to share his safecracking expertise on his YouTube channel. One of his videos catches the attention of notorious thief Gwendoline (Nathalie Emmanuel), who recruits him to help her on a special heist. The plan is to traverse through Europe to locate three mysterious safes, find a way to open them, and run out with the money contained. Ludwig will have to use his special skills as a safecracker to carefully open these safes that were designed to make the unlocking sync with the classic pieces of composer Richard Wagner. Not long after, Ludwig meets the rest of the team including young hacker Korina (Ruby O. Fee), getaway driver Rolph (Guz Khan), and action man Brad Cage (Stuart Martin).
After some introductions, the team move forward with their plan, making enough distractions to get Ludwig to demonstrate his mastery at cracking open such a complex safe. Meanwhile, Interpol Chief Delacroix (Jonathan Cohen) and his team are on their trail, but are always one step behind them. Though they’re becoming successful with their heist, the team start to experience their different dynamics affecting their workmanship. Not to mention, Ludwig develops romantic feelings toward Gwendoline that further complicates matters.
Although the zombies don’t play a major role this time around, this prequel instead tells its own story within the same universe. In fact, the zombies only make appearances in both news footage and nightmare sequences. These couple of references may not be all that necessary and only serve to pad out the film a bit.
What we do get from the rest of the film is a fun and sharply written heist film that takes the “Ocean’s Eleven” formula and turn it on its head. It’s a heist film that combines the visceral thrills of Michael Mann’s “Heat” with the stylish cleverness of Edgar Wright’s “Baby Driver.” The movie gets very meta when the characters are self-aware about what kind of film they’re in without turning the whole thing into a full-fledge parody. All the main actors bring each of their personalities to their roles, which helps give the comedy some believability.
On the topic of style, Schweighofer brings his own creativity to each sequence letting the camera move through his character’s viewpoint when he figures out the mechanisms of a safe. Seeing those gears move together like pieces of a puzzle under Ludwig’s careful skill is probably the most intense and dramatic part of the whole film. However, some of the action scenes that rely on handheld camera work are pretty dizzying to watch. Still, you can see the potential in the young director trying to bring something fresh and different to the Snyder zombie-verse.
Aside from his directing, Schweighofer retains his character’s likability from the previous film. He does a good job bringing more weight to his role especially when it echoes his character’s fate in the earlier film. Both Emmanuel and O. Fee are genuinely appealing, while Martin and Khan are merely comedic muscles regardless of what scenes they share.
Those going into “Army of Thieves” hoping to see more zombie action will be greatly disappointed. But anybody else who has seen “Army of the Dead” or are just going into seeing this as a curiosity will likely be pleasantly surprised by this fun heist comedy. In many ways, this one might be more entertaining than the original given its tightly focused story and cleverly written characters. It’ll be interesting to see where this franchise will go from here sometime next year.
THE MOVIE’S RATING: TV-MA
THE CRITIC’S RATING: 3.25 Stars (Out of Four)
