Bobalopacus

Army of Thieves doesn't really work as a story because there is virtually zero character development, instead there are a range of, often repetitive, events happening to the characters - a process that produces ever decreasing results. I was quite intrigued for the first ten or so minutes, but by the end I couldn't care less about these cartoonish one dimensional characters.

You could argue that the lead character, Ludwig/Sebastian, played by the director himself, changes in a superficial sense but he encounters very few interesting obstacles in that path. You could argue that colouring the safe-cracking theme with details from Wagner's Ring Cycle adds a depth and weight to proceedings, but I found the rather dull manner in which this content was relayed unappealing and the details themselves felt like they were cribbed from a Wikipedia page. If there was an intended deeper significance to all this, then I'm afraid it was lost on me.

As for the sequences of safe-cracking, these were so preposterous and repetitive that they rendered all potential suspense mute.

What else occurs? Well we have a unsatisfying 'romance' hinted at, but there was zero chemistry, believability or, again, genuine development. On top of that, there's some pretty locations, some very average action sequences and a bunch of super-dumb characters and 'plot' developments.

It's sadly typical, mid to high budget, glossy, hollow, streaming fare. AI will soon be writing and producing content like this, no doubt.

As context I should point out I haven't watched 'Army of Dead' of which this movie is apparently a prequel - so I approached this as a standalone movie and must admit I was a little confused as to why zombies were involved at all - other than perhaps to be a bit quirky. I also approached it with very few preconceptions - I wasn't aware Zack Snyder was involved, but in hindsight that makes a lot of sense.

Mean, moody men and motorcycles missing meaningful moments. Is Tom Hardy a good actor? I found his performance flat and uninspiring here. Is Jodie Comer a genius? I found her accent annoying and her character hollow. Is Austin Butler the new James Dean? Well it sure looks like that's what he was aiming for. He certainly has the looks nailed, but again his character was dull, dull, dull. If this isn't a character piece then, maybe it has an interesting plot? Nope. I gave up three quarters the way through despite it being a period and topic I found intriguing. Why did they think we'd care about these characters?