Braquage à l'américaine

I caught the premiere of this movie at the Toronto International Film Festival this week and out of all the films I screened this week, this was by far the worst. Audience members walked out mid way and rightfully so.

Adrian Brody attempted to play a hardened criminal however came off more as a leisure suited forgettable character. Set in New Orleans neither Brody or Christensen could maintain any type of accent or connection.

Hayden Christensen appears in a role often played by Casey Affleck only without any sort of stage presence. There was zero connection between these two supposed brothers mixed with random crying scenes to evoke failed emotions.

Akon proves that he's just as forgettable as an actor as he is a music artist and having his music included in the soundtrack only added to the ridiculousness of this film.

With a plot containing so many holes that the end was seen before the 15 minute mark hit lets you know what you're in for. Borrowing from Heat and The Town, American Heist leaves the audience wanting more and wondering what and why they just watched.

Jordana Brewster looks great and was probably the only redeeming quality of the film for that reason alone.

Save your time and money and avoid this one.

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.

Action ? Nope. I calculated that the sum of all main characters spent a grand total of 17 calories throughout the story. Mostly because one of them trots about 5 yards somewhere in the first half.

Drama ? More likely. You'll mostly watch brothers talking gravely and crying in each other's arms. There's also 1 woman, and she's in a love angle. That way, 2 requirements of US formatted products are met, killing two stones with one bird.

Heist ? Barely. It's 1 hour and a half long, and the heist itself starts after 1 hour in. I'm not saying that the heist preparations take 1 hour. Preparations ? What preparations ? Let's just pop in the bank with guns, take everyone hostage and hope nobody notices from outside. From now on, you'll mostly watch brothers talking gravely and crying in each other's arms, but with their faces covered.

American ? Yes, the title isn't a complete lie. Not sure what the exact purpose of this adjective is... maybe to warn us that this heist won't occur in Papua New Guinea and that there won't be Austin Minis. Actually, I was expecting a gang of nuke-toting, gum-bubbling, Gump-quoting, segway-racing corporate-tattooed obese survivalists. Of which I saw none, so it's only technically American; just.

I decided to rent this movie in part due to the cast, but also for the fact that it seemed to promise that there would be a lot of action. But to tell the truth, I was really let down by the end results. If you are looking for a lot of action, you would probably be better off looking elsewhere. The opening hour of the movie has almost no action at all. What that first hour is instead devoted to is for the most part clichés you've seen in other heist movies before, recruiting people, planning, and other things presented without any fresh angles or viewpoints. And it's awfully slow; I kept wanting the movie to stop spinning its wheels and get to business. But after that first hour, the planned heist is pulled off and takes the remaining half hour of the running time. Is is worth the wait? I would say no. Except for one brief but somewhat cool moment involving a helicopter, the action and so-called tension and suspense feels generic and not the least bit exciting. And the movie ends on a note that feels both incomplete and has you wondering, "Just what was the point of this movie?" I will admit the movie looks okay for what wasn't a megabudget, but I've seen plenty of movies made for even less money that managed to be more exciting, more thought-provoking, and more action-packed than this.