With How To Rob A Bank, David Lietch Tackles The Heist Genre
The John Wick co-director pivots to a very different kind of actioner.
It’s been interesting to observe how the cinematic paths have diverged for Chad Stahelski and David Leitch, the filmmakers behind John Wick. While the stuntmen-turned-directors collaborated on the first film in that now-celebrated action franchise, they went their separate ways soon after. Stahelski stayed on to build the world of Wick into a cultural juggernaut, while Leitch has lent his talents to other original stories, helming various actioners about down-on-their-luck blond men (and one blonde woman!) forced to face off against armies of assassins. But his projects, splashy as they are, function better as showcases for stuntwork than anything else.
Predictable narratives, regressive tropes, and juvenile humor have been hamstringing Leitch’s oeuvre from the very beginning. Style trumping substance isn’t enough to dismiss the director’s efforts entirely, though: every time Leitch returns with another intriguing premise and trots out another gorgeous cast to act it out, I can feel my expectations resetting. For How To Rob A Bank, they might be higher than ever, if only because Leitch is pivoting into a genre that’s guaranteed to please a crowd. (And, not for nothing, giving us blond Nicholas Hoult.)
The concept for How To Rob A Bank might be Leitch’s wackiest: the upcoming film follows a group of streamers who don furry masks and record a successful string of bank robberies, effectively giving their growing audience a crash course in high-stakes thievery. Hoult’s ringleader is waging a battle against the system at large — the film’s thesis revolves around the inevitable shadiness of Big Banking — but it’s clear there’s also a personal score to settle here. Leitch and screenwriter Mark Bianculli are saving that mystery for later; their first trailer focuses instead on setting up a similarly modern cat-and-mouse game.
Social media fame aids Hoult and his team in making a political statement, but it quickly puts them on the radar of a no-nonsense FBI agent (John C. Reilly). He, in turn, taps a skilled hacker (Zoë Kravitz) to help track down his targets. It sounds a little bit like Catch Me If You Can or The Thomas Crown Affair, just filtered through a slightly absurd, chronically online lens. For the record, though, that may be exactly what this genre needs now. Ditto for Leitch, who always gets behind great ideas but sometimes struggles to maximize their potential. How To Rob A Bank could break that streak in a major way — but if nothing else, it should be a super-fun spin on an age-old genre.
