Braquage à l'américaine

They complained how bad the movie was and they were right. I knew we were in trouble with that cheaply done title graphic in the beginning, which is odd because they obviously had a serious budget.

I think Adrien Brody was a poor choice for the role even though he gave a solid performance. We were supposed to believe he was this hardened criminal just released from prison. Fat chance, with those flamingo legs of his. And what seems like support for him given by some black thugs he knew from prison was nothing more than exploitation of his services, and his brother's (Hayden Christensen) talent with cars, in helping them rob a bank. And Christensen's character was just trying to keep his life on the clean side, working as a car mechanic. The brothers have a troubled relationship, making it one of the most bizarre reunions between family members in movie history.

The film further trudges along with this love story subplot between the straight-laced Christensen character and an old flame (Jordana Brewster) who happens to work for 9-1-1 dispatch. You see where this is going? Despite the efforts of Adrien Brody and Hayden Christensen, this is the worst film I have seen at the Toronto International Film Festival. It was a Heat (1995) wannabe written by an 11-year-old with limited awareness of reality and the human condition, and directed by an amateur. But none of this didn't prevent it from being bought for distribution immediately upon it's premiere.

Action? Solid, but nothing special. Heist element? Lacking, but enough for fans of non-elaborate larceny.

Neither of those things, however, take center stage for long. The movie wants so desperately to focus on the emotional aspect of the story...on the relationships. The problem is, it introduces these connections and backstories one after another without REALLY giving any depth to a single one. Moments that, if developed properly, could be sincere and truly emotional are rather just "out of left field" scenes that just waste screen time with a story that doesn't make a lot of sense.

On a more technical note, it almost gives the feeling that the cinematographer got switched out halfway through the movie. The beginning is filled with erratic zooms and cuts, standard cheap action movie stuff, while the mid-to ending is much more characteristic of...well...a GOOD, professional movie.

The drama is definitely the focus of the movie, but even some halfway-decent action and a plot twist or two along the way couldn't save this movie from it's nonsensical emotional story, with some awkward dialogue to boot.

But that's mostly due to the fact that the main focus was on two brothers.

Adrien Brody plays the older brother who did hard time for the crime that also involved his little bro played by Hayden Christensen who did a shorter sentence and got out determined to do as good of a job as any ex- con to keep his nose clean, but when his brother gets out, he forces little bro back into the life as a favor to the man that stop the constant booty tapping that he was getting.

This focus could have been better. Adrien Brody gave a decent performance as a man who got broken in his decade in prison, but this performance goes over weakly in this mediocre film that did not develop his character enough for Brody's attempts at heart breaking scene stealing.

Bouncing his acting chops off of Christensen was not a good call either. He tries, but Christensen seem too focus on his though guy persona to really get any acting done.

I feel most sorry for Johanna Brewster who is now officially typed cast as the girlfriend to the criminal car nut, which she perfected in the Fast and Furious franchise.

For the movie to be called American Heist is misleading, though the implementation of the heist was somewhat suspenseful, we did not get to see much heist planning. It's no Heat or Set it off.

Whatever this movie was trying to do it kind of fumbled the ball in both cases.

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.

Boring, predictable and utterly forgettable, "American Heist" is a complete waste of time. I watched this because my wife has a thing for Adrien Brody. I think he's a fine actor, but clearly this was done just for a paycheck. It's hard to make a bland bank robbery, but it was done successfully here. Just putting known actors in a film does not a good film make, an intelligent well-written script helps and this was just thrown together without much thought.

Save your money and read a good novel or take a walk or stare into space! There are so many poor films out there. When the industry complains about loss of its audience, it should consider the product we are asked to rent/purchase.