Robbery

First, the good. Video quality is good with some decent cinematography, and the sound quality is also good. Art Hindle is a very good and underappreciated actor. He actually does a good job in this, or at least the best anyone could do with what he was given to work with. Which brings us to.......

The bad. There is plenty of bad here. The supporting actors are mostly terrible, especially the younger guy hanging around Hindle. The main problem is the writing, or lack of it. The story is not just incredibly boring and poorly paced, it's just plain stupid and full of nonsensical story holes. Characters behave in unbelievably stupid fashion. Complete lacks of logic and plot holes you could drive a train through.

MILD SPOILERS AHEAD:

• The huge "twist" is one that we knew was coming literally from the first time the guy tells Hindle he's his son.
• What's the whole point of the heist at the casino? It's ridiculous yet somehow still the most boring heist in movie history
• The casino owner makes a big deal of having to fill out her last will and testament, and it's literally still sitting on her desk in front of her days later? Is that all she does, is stare at her printed out but unsigned will all day every day?
• The guy owes money to the casino owner, they bring him in and take his fingers, and the big heist plan is for these three people, all of them well known to the casino owner and the only two dudes who run the place, to come in and sneak all the money out?
• The whole heist is so stupid I just have to reiterate it again. The guy, who owes them money and whose fingers they JUST took, returns to heist them and is not recognized because he is wearing SUNGLASSES and claiming to be blind? Talking to the employees and getting them to tell him what his cards are? Cracking jokes and bumping into people? They seriously don't recognize this guy? A blind guy who also apparently just lost the exact same fingers?

Seriously, some of the worst and laziest writing I've ever seen, even in an independent film. Art Hindle deserves better and movie audiences do too.

How did this get funded? If it got grants from tax payers, I want my cash back. I did not approve of this mess.

What else can I say? This movie starts so-so, then goes and make some promises.... which it can't keep, because 33% of its running time is mired in sloppy screenwriting, blatantly visible in the childish antics that start pretty early in the movie, and in the one-dimensional supporting character of the native-american girl. Bad acting doesn't help either. The father/son duo do a good job for the most part (though in the end there is some over-the-top performance by the kid), but the rest of the cast is kinda wooden. Still, it gets one thing straight in the end: the depiction of loss, and the renewal of hope. Anyway, I don't think this was a total waste of time...and I do think there is hope for the director/screenwriter, if next time he can seriously spend some quality time brushing up his script.

Robbery feels tempting, and in away it is a heist film, but more of the human level, life and death, and that everything expires one day ...death.

its a film without extravagance, the story lacks a lot of substance, the dementia bait doesnt impress me, nor do the overall acting. its one of the films that is filmed so close up in the actors face, so youre fooled to believe. the setup design and locations are very abandoned factory like.

its not an exciting robbery film, so make a pass on this if your in for the action.

TORONTO AFTER DARK 2018

While the title may make this sound like a simple heist film, Robbery is much more than that, moving back and forth from a crime film to family drama with some nice twists in between.

We meet Richie (Jeremy Ferdman), a part-time thief who finds himself in debt with a very ruthless casino owner (a scene-chewing Jennifer Dale). Needing cash, and help as a thief because he really isn't very good at it, Richie enlists his dad Frank (Art Hindle) to help him out. However, the fact that Frank has dementia almost negates his knowledge of being a thief, he was one back in another lifetime, but it allows for a great storyline to unfold in interesting directions.

Richie meets a woman named Winona while trying to get help for his gambling addiction, which turns out to be loads of fun and not nearly the clichéd native woman with a gambling issue inserted into the story that it seems. The story takes a lot of different turns, but the gambling, Frank's illness, never seem to be a gimmick but instead important parts of the story that needs to be discussed.

Written and directed by Corey Stanton, his debut film, the film moves at a solid pace, building story and tension well, giving us some wonderful moments to digest while trying to keep things in perspective in terms of just who the good and bad guys are. The idea of Frank's seemingly five minutes of clarity from his dementia to help with the thefts is done flawlessly and doesn't come across as a cheap parlor trick.

The performances by everyone are solid, especially Hindle and Ferdman, who are really quite the combo as father and son. Ferdman plays off of Hindle perfectly while Hindle is very believable as a man who is both sympathetic in his medical plight as he is questionable in his morals concerning crime and his son. Sera-Lys McArthur adds some extra spice more than a simple love interest and Jennifer Dale is spot on as the evil and unflinching casino owner that haunts Richie and his future.

There is some great dark humor and wonderful tension sprinkled throughout this film and only in certain moments does it lag a bit, a few uneven plot points that the story could have done without. However, these moments are few and far between as Stanton's script is written in a way that doesn't allow too much time to be taken on any one moment, moving the story ahead while throwing some interesting wrinkles in to keep the viewer off guard.

A wonderful tale of family, addiction, crime and deceit, Robbery was a great film that will keep viewers interested right to the very end

I have sat through better school play productions. Acting is secondary school drama group.