A thrilling movie about robberies, friendship and invincible nerds, without which no business can work.
A man with an unspoken name Sebastian Schlencht-Wenert (played by actor Matthias with also, in general, a difficult surname Schweighefer) works as a bank clerk, and in his spare hours leads a YouTube channel about hacking. Once the unlucky blogger is noticed by professional thieves: they offer him to become part of the team and together open a series of legendary safes scattered throughout Europe. True, the main difficulty for Sebastian, in addition to participating in the first robbery, will also be adaptation in the team. Among his partners, he has a whole set of wonderful shots: reckless driver Rolf (Guz Khan), cynical hacker Corina (Ruby O. Fee), charming Gwendoline (Natalie Emmanuel), whom Schlencht-Wenert falls in love with at first sight ... and her badass boyfriend Brad (Stuart Martin).
In the chronology of the new Netflix universe (even an anime series is planned, so please take it seriously), Army of Thieves precedes the events of Army of the Dead by Zack Snyder and tells about the life of the charming burglar Dieter (here he is also called Sebastian) before he decided to go to Vegas with Batista's squad. Like the previous film, this is also a heist-movie - a dashing movie about robberies, the cunning tactics of a team of enthusiasts who decided to hit the jackpot, and, of course, teamwork. True, now there are almost no walking dead: monsters roam here except in the TV box and in the dreams of the eternally restless protagonist. The virus has just begun to spread, and America has not yet realized the scale of the problem, and the thieves are deciding to take advantage of the hype and turn their life around.
It remains only to diagnose that the franchise has lost after the retirement of Zack Snyder from the director's post. On the one hand, insane action, bizarre visual solutions and real ruthlessness (his heroes died no less often than teenagers from slashers). On the other hand, it is rocking hand-held shooting even in simple dialogue scenes and pretentiousness. "Army of Thieves", directed by Matthias Schweighefer himself (this film can be considered a benefit performance), is much lighter and more mundane. Now this is not a mixture of zombie horror, robbery movies, political satire and a bunch of other subgenres, settings and problems, but a standard, in general, heist-movie - a kind of slightly self-ironic Ocean's Friends.
Sebastian himself periodically comments on what is happening in the film. Say, our team is like in a movie, and we discuss the hacking plan in a fast clip editing - cozy, but, frankly, senseless winks to those who want to call the film a formulaic one. He is just that - unpretentious, simple, not a hacking genre, but hammering with a sledgehammer right on the lid of the safe, where classic scripts are hidden. The Army of Thieves has seen all understood and half-bad critics in a coffin: it does not need to be justified (which, however, for some reason she herself sometimes does), and even more so to retell. This is an outstandingly simple-minded movie that does not need intermediaries. In its own way, a unique experience of experiencing what has been seen and heard a hundred times already - repeat in the one hundred and first these same things in a review in your own words, and the magic will disappear.
Much more interesting in "Army of Thieves", in general, is not Søderberg cosplay. Even in a thoroughly predetermined plot, Schweighefer finds something universal, touchingly sincere and far from the templates of the genre. First of all, his film is also an ode to geniuses-neurotics, eternally self-doubting eccentrics who are doomed to awkward attempts to become “their own” in the circle of new people. Sebastian's hand is trembling, he always complains about a possible failure and cannot fit into the company of old comrades. In the bank, right at the workplace, a vile old woman yells at him: Sebastian looks around at the TV and sees the same lady on the screen - only a zombie. The impostor syndrome is superimposed on the fear of becoming nothing, an odious man in the street with the instincts and eagerness of a walking dead.
Although the protagonist looks like a storehouse of complexes, Schweighefer obviously has the warmest feelings for him. Either because they are similar in character, or because the director himself plays this role. Or all at once. Focused on himself and his inner problems (and sometimes also on the girl he likes), the geek, who is delighted with the architecture of the safes and the music of Wagner, has replaced the self-confident Danny Ocean in expensive glasses. New times - new heroes.
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