Shelter

This has to be the worst directed, written and acted film I've seen in a long time. The over-stylized directing was trying to impress, but ended up being either cringeworthy or laughable, especially the outdated camera techniques and effects like the slow-mo scenes. This felt like a high school drama class production from the 90's, and I've seen more exciting and more realistic made-for-TV caper films from Lifetime and Aurora Teagarden Mysteries.

Then you have the overly cliched writing with matching characters and dialogue, that was parts from every other film in this genre, but this was done much worse. There was nothing unique or engaging besides the overall premise of the story, than ended up playing out like a cheap wannabe heist film. None of the characters were convincing, and much of that blame goes to the director for failing to direct his cast properly, and some blame falls on the writer who gave us the most annoying character played by Cam Gigandet. You will literally eye-roll and cringe at his character - demeanor, dialogue, etc, the entire runtime.

Even in its normally comfortable 91 min runtime, this entire film was dragged out with plot and technical issues in between every cliche available to this genre. It was just an unnecessary film written and directed so lazily, you'll cringe in all the moments that are supposed to be funny, and laugh at many serious scenes, like when the gold bar is being pawned and is being handled like a hollow piece of plastic. There is zero realism, suspense or thrills in this laughably failed caper.

It's a very generous 4/10 from me, because I can forgive certain rookie filmmaking mistakes. But there were far too many I couldn't overlook to recommend anyone waste their time seeing this like I did.

Annabel (Lisa Vidal) leads a group of thieves who are tasked by Holocaust survivors to retrieve art stolen by the Nazis during WWII.

The concept is interesting. The 1985 section is intriguing. I'm willing to go with the premise. Then the group recruits two Latinas and Cam Gigandet. This is treating the group like every other heist movie. The movie fills the crew with people skilled at individual tasks. It's trying to be Oceans. It misses the point of the base concept. The big takeaway with these characters shouldn't be skills. They should be believers. It's also weird for Jews to hire a Latino crew to take down Nazis. One would expect more Jewish content in the crew. The heist is not that great. There are bad turns. The general filmmaking is weak. It's all weak.

Good story and could be a great watch. However, it's a badly directed movie, which makes this film boring to watch. Cust is not good either. I watched this movie for about 10 minutes and gave up. It's like watching in high school theater low-level play. What could have been a pretty solid heist story is thwarted by budgetary shortcomings, bits of awkward or confusing writing, and draggy direction that makes things feel like they're taking too long. Viewers are forced to deal with unremarkable characters and stale banter, which doesn't sell the electricity of the players and their specific game.

Until the opening credits ended.

Dreadful accents, cliche upon cliche, all with that B-Movie look.

I don't quite know what it is, but you recognize it immediately.

Somebody who really shouldn't have tried to make a movie.

What a waste.

Of time, effort, money. Whatever.

It's a good premise too. We still don't know where all that looted art went. If indeed it went anywhere.

South America?

Private collections?

Swiss Bank vaults?

Such a shame. If only someone had told this director to just STOP.

I felt it was my duty to warn you.

To spare you.

I'll never get those minutes back.

Please DON'T watch this.

You'd be better off watching the TV series Leverage. This is similar, but they take themselves way to seriously and it makes it a bit cringe worthy. The acting is also a tad worse in my opinion, because of this. It's cheesy without being funny.

Also for supposed expert thieves they aren't very good at what they do. The fight are pretty painful to watch. Not sure if this was a made for TV movie, but it feels like one.

All that said, if you like heist movies this is okay to watch if you're doing something else, like making dinner or playing a board game. It certainly doesn't need your full attention.