Coin Heist

If you can appreciate a decent heist story pulled of by decent teenage characters, without Hollywood production values, then you should really give this a try.

Emily Hagins wrote and directed and I think she did a fine job with the adaptation from a novel. The narrative had a strong even pace and it never dragged. The young actors gave it their all, and I think they pulled it off just fine.

Don't be too critical of these small indie efforts, and you'll find a gem or two. "Coin Heist" may not have the huge budget that the "Oceans" series had, but the story was just as interesting and just as well told.

Enjoy it.

A Netflix production that fails to impress on literally every aspect of filmmaking. It's script is at times cheesy, doesn't make sense (why discuss a teenage crush in the middle of a robbery?) and the entire middle segment of the story is boring as hell. The directing isn't much better either. Some awkward shots and blocking in there. And the acting ranges from poor to mediocre. We watched this one with the family (40,38,13,11 years old). Not one of us enjoyed it.

United by dire circumstances, four unlikely allies from a Philadelphia prep school - the hacker, the slacker, the athlete, and the perfect student - band together to attempt the impossible: steal from the U.S. Mint.

I was drawn to this film because the director is somewhat of a celebrated figure. Everyone, myself included, is waiting to see if this apparently child prodigy makes a big name for herself in the world of film. So far she has done alright, but has not landed that one big hit quite yet.

This film goes through the motions, but ultimately could have been something made for ABC Family. I wish the "heist" part of the film had more punch. The danger is never really played up, and the consequences never seem all that dire, even though this must be an awfully illegal thing to even plan, let alone follow through on.

There are enough things inherent in "Coin Heist" that it really shouldn't work. The plot is outlandish, the ending descends into schmaltz, and (at heart) it's a teen coming-of-age drama (not like there are any of those floating around these days). However, despite all the unevenness and clichés, "Coin Heist" still manages to at least be entertaining due to the great acting and slickness of the setup.

For a basic plot summary (no spoilers), "Coin Heist" sees Jason (Alex Saxon) struggling with the reality that his father has been stealing from his high school's endowment, leaving the father in prison and the school in danger of shutting down. After a field trip to the U.S. mint, however, Jason's friend Alice (Alexis G. Zall), a hacker at heart and in skill, devises a plan to infiltrate the mint and print some rare coins that can be sold to save the school. The plan will only work, however, if they can also rope in organization queen Dakota (Sasha Pieterse) and outsider Benny (Jay Walker).

For the first half or so of "Coin Heist", I was invested in the characters and their mission. The producers do a great job of setting up the backgrounds of each character, and I really felt like they could be real high-schoolers. Sure, their mission is highly improbable, but that's what cinema is all about, right?!

The problem, however, is that after that roughly half-way point my investment really started to wane for two reasons:

1. The build-up to the caper was much more interesting than the caper itself; and 2. I felt that the ending descending into a bit too much hijinx and corniness for my liking. I realize this is a film directed at teens, so perhaps it plays a bit better to that demographic, but for an older viewer it seemed like a bit of a letdown to build up these great characters and then have them, in most cases, succumb to the tropes of the genre I was afraid would happen from the get-go.

So, while I can easily give "Coin Heist" a slightly-better-than-average 6 out of 10 stars here, I feel that it failed to take that "next step" into the greatness range due to its "running out of steam" in the latter portion. The target audience (teens) may disagree with me here, of course.

The story was so overly simple and not exciting in the least. The acting was on par with what you'd expect with this kind of movie. It was just a hard watch.