Army of Thieves review: this heist movie adds nothing to Army of the Dead

Army of thieves, Matthias Schweighöfer’s prequel to Zack Snyder’s hilarious Las Vegas zombie heist movie Army of the dead, borrows from Snyder’s visual flourishes and sage humor. It also asks a bold question that the Snyder movie neglected: How exciting is it to break safes in this world without the zombies that defined the first movie? The answer: not much. It is as exciting as watching a hacker hit a keyboard.

On Army of the deadLovable and scrawny German safe thief Ludwig Dieter (Schweighöfer) joins a gang of rude and unruly mercenaries to rob a zombie-infested Las Vegas hotel by breaking into a nearly unbreakable safe called Götterdämmerung. At the opening of Army of thieves, set six years earlier, Dieter is sitting in his quaint apartment in Postad, Germany, recording a YouTube video about the history of the vault. Created by Hans Wagner, a locksmith sick from the death of his wife and son, four super-safes take their names from the Ring Cycle: Das Rheingold, Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), Siegfried and Götterdämmerung (The Twilight of the Gods) . Once the safes were finished, Wagner locked himself inside one and dropped it to the bottom of the ocean.

The legend is one of Dieter’s favorite bedtime tales, who dreams of finding and defeating Wagner’s safes. He gets a chance to achieve that fantasy when Gwendoline (Nathalie Emmanuel), a thief with a red Interpol notice in her name, recruits him to carry out a trio of heists involving three of the safes.

Army of thieves has been designed to bring Netflix into the franchise business, creating cinematic universes similar to the ones Marvel and DC have been expanding for years. But Schweighöfer’s prequel doesn’t offer the same level of emotion or blood as Snyder’s movie. The heists are all postponed affairs, and ultimately the film succumbs to the script’s franchise ambitions.

Schweighöfer’s origin story film begins on a strong note by telling audiences more about the charming nerd Dieter, known in this story as Sebastian Schlencht-Wöhnert. Sebastian walks through life with the same routine: he dons a crystal blue suit, buys a banana and walnut muffin at the local cafe, and reports to his miserable job at the bank. It’s a serious existence that’s been changed by two events: There are reports of a zombie apocalypse happening in America, and there’s a lonely sight and comment on your YouTube video, telling you to show up at a secret house with the password “Götterdämmerung”.

The cheeky script, written by Shay Hatten (John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum), tries to emulate Snyder’s gloomy humor. Sebastian arrives at the mysterious house to discover a clandestine tournament of safe thieves populated by punk contestants named Fireball, Valiant, Neo, etc. The taunt of another infamous underworld recalls Hatten’s work on the John wick universe, but that tantalizingly absurd mockery of a story about too-cool-for-school safe-robbers going head-to-head is abandoned in favor of a more conventional story.

The cookie cutter narrative beats have Gwendoline introducing Sebastian to her team: Rolph (Guz Khan), a getaway driver with insane driving skills; master hacker Korina (Ruby O. Fee) and Brad Cage (Stuart Martin), an archetypal action hero who was inspired to lift weights by watching Nicolas Cage in Air conditioning. Unlike the gang in Army of the deadNone of these characters possess a shred of emotional depth, and their group dynamics and motivations are paper thin. Gwendoline, for example, wants Dieter to break Wagner’s trio of safes to achieve legendary status. But the script does very little work to make your desire or your team’s interest in accompanying the trip feel credible. While each safe has a large amount of money, when Dieter breaks them, the bandits hardly try to kiss it.

The same lack of motivation applies to Interpol agents Delacroix (Jonathan Cohen) and his partner Beatrix (Noémie Nakai). Delacroix’s obsession with the group stems from being shot by Brad in the buttocks. That’s little motivation for him, and it’s unclear why he’s chasing revenge and Gwendoline and company are obsessed with breaking down a trio of safes when everyone knows the zombie apocalypse is spreading. Shouldn’t the whole world panic?

The shortsighted goals of franchise building consume Army of thieves up to the crust. The origin of Sebastian’s eventual pseudonym Ludwig Dieter is tied to a comic, with shameful neglect. Sebastian often dreams of zombies coming to kill him, setting the pace of the story in Army of the dead where it is locked in a safe for protection. And the film’s prologue connects directly to Snyder’s film, via a flash-forward sequence. The only variation Schweighöfer takes is the look and feel of his film – it’s not that bleak. Brightly lit and with far fewer gunfights, it’s not that scary, or that entertaining, for that matter. The quirky humor drowns the film in sensitive seas.

Army of thieves‘ The gravest sin, however, isn’t his sharp characters, unadventurous spirit, or cloying franchise-building. Heists are just boring. The trio of safes are supposed to be located in three different countries – France, the Czech Republic, and Switzerland – but you wouldn’t know about the globetrotters brought on, judging by the scant visual clues to the location of any scene. Borrowing from other heist movies, Schweighöfer uses a montage of characters depicting the heist in their heads to create tension. But here, the family tactic deflates the drama, because his plan lacks panache. A heist, full of references to Kathryn Bigelow’s Point blank, leads to a nauseating shootout that cinematographer Bernhard Jasper captures with an overzealous handheld.

The final hurdle, which initially took place in a casino, sound familiar? – is totally undermined by setting the final scene of the safe breaking elsewhere. At all times, Schweighöfer tries to make Sebastian’s lonely undertaking exciting, but does not understand the character and genre of the heist. When Sebastian spontaneously tells his team in Army of the dead about the mythology around the Götterdämmerung, it’s cute and endearing. When he does the same to Gwendoline, using Wagner’s cycle to explain his love for her and safes, it turns out to be a horrifying homicide. And by spinning a movie totally around cracking safes, you miss out that the draw for a heist movie isn’t getting into a safe, it’s the plan that is used to gain access and escape with the rewards afterward.

Army of thieves it doesn’t solve the franchise puzzle, especially since the movie doesn’t provide a sufficient reason for one to exist. Dieter was an adorable highlight in Army of the dead, but this movie does not offer a greater understanding of him. When the final scene adds footage from Snyder’s movie in a decidedly disjointed aesthetic shift, the emotional line from this version of Dieter to the version we see six years later is barely noticeable. If a prequel was absolutely necessary, then seeing what Scott Ward (Dave Bautista) and his team went through when the zombie apocalypse broke out might have been punchy enough. Instead, Schweighöfer’s prequel loses the winning combination that this charming character possessed in Snyder’s film, rather than a vault that induces yawning into nothingness.

Army of thieves it’s streaming on Netflix now.