Cinemavenger

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Army of Thieves

Another week, another Netflix new release. What the fuck did we do to deserve this? Short of a lifetime of kicking puppies, pantsing nuns, or stealing from the poor to give to the rich (it's not just for governments anymore!), I'm not sure anything could justify anyone having to watch Netflix steadily pump out runny shit after runny shit and call them "must see" movies.

A few months ago, Netflix released a zombie apocalypse-set heist flick called Army of the Dead. I feel pretty confident that I didn't miss an Internet campaign clamoring for a prequel, so it must be slack-jawed execs or a merciless, out of control algorithm that greenlit Army of Thieves. 

If you had the misfortune to sit through the first one, you might've been a little interested in the backstory of the main, tough guy character or, maybe, his daughter. I'm not sure there's enough sniffin' glue in the world to get someone in the headspace of needing an origin story for the weirdo, German safecracker, but here we are.

Army of Thieves tells exactly that story. It goes into excrutiating detail about how Dieter/Sebastian (Matthias "Colonel Dink" Schweighofer, who somehow also directs) went from upstanding citizen and safecracking enthusiast to a member of not one but two heist crews over the course of the two movies.

It's a Zack "Is Wack, Yo" Snyder jawn, so it plasters "GWENDOLINE" on the screen at the same time Dieter/Sebastian says her name for the first time as he recounts how he met her. Because Snyder may be dumber than dirt, but he's gonna make damn sure his audience knows that he thinks they make dirt look like a Nobel Prize winner.

Believe it or don't, that fuckwittery is topped shortly thereafter by a scene in which some of the crew has to get away by jumping into a moving van. There isn't one goram reason why the van can't just stop for them. The cops aren't hot on their tails. No one is rushing home to cook dinner for their sick grandma. The van doesn't stop because Army of Thieves is to movies as getting kicked in the head by a horse is to a fun Saturday night.

And the "army" of thieves consists of exactly five people. So even the title is fucking bullshit. 

November 5, 2021