Over in the acting department, Jai Courtney overdoes it, achieving exactly what’s called for in the part, by glaring his eyes to excess. All of this moves along at a fast clip, but nothing feels rushed. There’s even a bit of well-placed throwaway comedy, with Agent Meyers’ wife on the phone, now wanting the dog, too. Guns are fired, people crash through windows, a car chase gets going, throbbing music charges into the soundtrack. Though the film has been relatively quiet till now, here’s when it shifts to thriller mode. Things don’t go the way anyone has planned. Underling agents Nevins and Hall (Jai Courtney and Anthony Ramos) are assigned to “the case.” One of them is a weak cop, the other is a bad cop. This is where the curve balls start getting pitched. But one agent rolls his eyes and says to the other, “We’ve got another guy confessing to the crime.” Time to meet his partner, FBI Agent Baker (Robert Patrick), one of those crusty, overworked lawmen.Īnd it’s back to “Tom,” as he refers to himself, calling the FBI, saying he’s the robber everyone’s been looking for, and that he wants to surrender himself, give back the money - in return for a reduced sentence - because he met a woman. Look, there’s the cute little dog with him in his stakeout car.
There are more introductions to more characters: FBI Agent Meyers (Jeffrey Donovan), who’s just gone through a divorce, in which his wife got the house and he got the dog. But she shushes him with, “No, not tonight.” Nope, she doesn’t know about his sordid past, but neither has he robbed anything since meeting her. and, don’t blink, a year has gone by, they’re a couple, and he’s asking her to move in with him.Īnd, he adds, “There’s something else I need to tell you” (which would be, “I’m a bank robber”).
“Tom” goes to a storage unit company, charmingly chats up Annie (Kate Walsh), the adult grad school student who runs the place. Quick! Introduce another main character! OK. Wasting no narrative time, a news report tells of the “eighth bank robbery in six years, with still no suspect,” and there’s “Tom” (Neeson) drilling a hole in and blasting open a bank vault, hopping in a car, and driving away. It gets right down to telling its story, sticks with it, and has a cast-full of actors playing it out, and sometimes overplaying it (to just the right degree) in a way that creates a constant “what comes next?” atmosphere. It’s a slick and lean piece of filmmaking. Then everything - and more - that can go wrong, does.īut while that sort of plotline is ripe for clichés, almost everything that’s presented here is surprisingly fresh.
#HONEST THIEF PROFESSIONAL#
Let’s see, a professional criminal decides to go straight, in this case because he’s finally met the right woman, and he doesn’t want to lose her. Don’t bother trying to figure out where this one’s going, even if you’re sure the ground, or at least something very much like it, has been covered before. and the film seems to stop for a moment, pleased with itself for finally offering up the line, happy to be delivering on its Taken sub-genre promise.How many more times will Liam Neeson say he’s retiring from the action film genre? Well, if he makes more of them like “Honest Thief,” let’s hope it’s not for a while. There’s a signal moment about 40’ in when Liam tells one of the bad guys he is *coming to get him*. In one instance, where the film tries to get rid of her by packing her onto a bus “for her own safety”, she jumps off (without us seeing) and reappears soon after. The writer / director kept trying to sideline Kate’s character to pursue his man-on-a-revenge-mission story (personally, I would have put Kate upfront and centre), but she kept jumping back into the fray. Their characters deserved a better, richer film. The problem is there’s not much else on display, except some good supporting performances from Jai Courtney (always terrific), Jeffrey Donovan (really strong, evoking Warren Oates modified by Bradford Dillman), and the great Kate Walsh.
#HONEST THIEF SERIES#
Liam Neeson does what is expected: the tension of his predicament delivers a series of now-get-out-of-thats as the complications ramp up. HONEST THIEF has a reasonable premise (a successful bank robber decides to turn himself in when he meets a woman he falls in love with), which it then unpacks and explores in all the right ways.but without any subtext or depth, or even feeling for character.
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