HOW TO ROB A BANK presents the story of Scott Scurlock (aka "Hollywood") with the sleek polish of a Hollywood production, and with it, all the ideological sleight of hand and worship of the status quo that such egregeious gloss often entails. What could have been a radical examination of an individual who chose creativity over conformity, rebellion over resignation, and of a system that has and continues to feed economic disparity instead becomes another tool of state narrative management: criminal genius reduced to cautionary tale, and the asinine police and fumbling FBI cast (predictably) as heroic.
Scurlock was no ordinary thief. With a keen intellect and flair for prosthetics, he transformed himself into a modern trickster, robbing banks with planning, style, and without resorting to violence. And yet, the documentary, like the institutions it seems loath to question, goes out of its way to paint him as dangerous, invoking TV news propaganda, inflated threat assessments, and vague trauma testimonies, just in case the audience forgets who they're supposed to root for.
The police, despite their historical penchant for surveillance over substance, are made to look competent through the sheer luck of circumstance. Scurlock wasn't caught by any masterful sleuthing; the house of cards simply collapsed. HOW TO ROB A BANK frames this as inevitability, as if daring to challenge capitalism was always doomed to fail.
This doc wants the thrill of outlaw glamour without the political discomfort of its implications. Scurlock's story, had it been told honestly, could have stood as a critique of a society that leaves no space for brilliance outside sanctioned pathways. Instead, the system wins again, on screen and off.
