American Heist

There seems to be something inherently lacking about American Heist. Be it may the boring pace or the lackluster script, the movie is considerably basic and uninteresting. Story follows James (Hayden Christensen) who is forced to do a heist by his brother Frankie (Adrien Brody). That's practically all there is to it, yet the movie is needlessly bloated by pointless cliché of crime drama.

It takes literally an hour before any momentum can be achieved. At that span of time American Heist is a repetitive foray of tired love subplot and awkward script which consists of refined use of words such as "Fuck" and "Bro" in every other sentences. It feels so dreary and dry as the cast could perform so much more.

Adrien Brody is certified good, bless him for trying so hard with so little, although in the end the performance is unintentionally uncomfortable. Hayden Christensen can definitely deliver better performance, in fact he did in Takers, which is exactly the same genre. Heck, even Jordana Brewster in Fast and Furious franchise has had better material to work with. Her role in this film is so redundant, almost a glorified wallflower even.

This is quite surprising since the movie has some good production. When it gets going the cinematography is pretty good. Using action oriented shots and presentation with the city in rain, the tension is elevated on the last act. However, it's barely enough to get audience's attention, especially after the comparatively weak start.

American Heist may boast some famous name and a glint of decent visual, but the tedious and generic material is a waste of time and money.

At least I had Star Wars ... or The Pianist. Depending which actor might have thoughts about his career, the answers are there. Hayden hit the Jackpot (I hope for him) with the Star Wars franchise and Adrien Brody had his critical success with Polanski. The latter seems to be doing a neat movie from time to time, though he also seems to be doing some very bad ones too.

This isn't a really bad one, though you wonder about the characters and how Mr. Brody came to play a character like this. I guess it had to do with the family business in the script and a scene where he can "shine" if you want to call it that. It's really rather annoying not to mention predictable.

I decided to rent this movie in part due to the cast, but also for the fact that it seemed to promise that there would be a lot of action. But to tell the truth, I was really let down by the end results. If you are looking for a lot of action, you would probably be better off looking elsewhere. The opening hour of the movie has almost no action at all. What that first hour is instead devoted to is for the most part clichés you've seen in other heist movies before, recruiting people, planning, and other things presented without any fresh angles or viewpoints. And it's awfully slow; I kept wanting the movie to stop spinning its wheels and get to business. But after that first hour, the planned heist is pulled off and takes the remaining half hour of the running time. Is is worth the wait? I would say no. Except for one brief but somewhat cool moment involving a helicopter, the action and so-called tension and suspense feels generic and not the least bit exciting. And the movie ends on a note that feels both incomplete and has you wondering, "Just what was the point of this movie?" I will admit the movie looks okay for what wasn't a megabudget, but I've seen plenty of movies made for even less money that managed to be more exciting, more thought-provoking, and more action-packed than this.

Action ? Nope. I calculated that the sum of all main characters spent a grand total of 17 calories throughout the story. Mostly because one of them trots about 5 yards somewhere in the first half.

Drama ? More likely. You'll mostly watch brothers talking gravely and crying in each other's arms. There's also 1 woman, and she's in a love angle. That way, 2 requirements of US formatted products are met, killing two stones with one bird.

Heist ? Barely. It's 1 hour and a half long, and the heist itself starts after 1 hour in. I'm not saying that the heist preparations take 1 hour. Preparations ? What preparations ? Let's just pop in the bank with guns, take everyone hostage and hope nobody notices from outside. From now on, you'll mostly watch brothers talking gravely and crying in each other's arms, but with their faces covered.

American ? Yes, the title isn't a complete lie. Not sure what the exact purpose of this adjective is... maybe to warn us that this heist won't occur in Papua New Guinea and that there won't be Austin Minis. Actually, I was expecting a gang of nuke-toting, gum-bubbling, Gump-quoting, segway-racing corporate-tattooed obese survivalists. Of which I saw none, so it's only technically American; just.

This is an average movie. The story isn't that great, the actors aren't really that good, and even the title of the movie is not well chosen. The first hour is just about the difficult relationship between two brothers, with a lot of crying and moaning. Add in that plot a woman and a couple of wannabe gangsters and you get the story. I wasn't that impressed by their acting plus the storyline is kind of boring and sometimes even so far fetched it's getting annoying. And then after one hour of sitting through all of this you finally get the "Heist". No big deal at all, just a bunch of amateurs going in a bank and hope they don't get caught. A lot more crying and bad scenarios and you are finally done with this movie. Don't waste your time with this one.