“Heist reminded me why I watch movies; to find the diamond in the proverbial rough and enjoy the hell out of it.”

FUCK. YES.

Just as I was growing tired of watching movies along comes Heist to give me a good kickstart. Heist is about a heist (duh), but this heist that goes sideways and the perpetrators are stuck on a city bus with numerous hostages. The three armed men, each of them doing this for different reasons, just robbed the scariest motherfucker who owns a casino, The Pope (not that Pope) played by Robert De Niro. These men now have to hold off a police pursuit, as well as the pursuit of The Pope’s men who see letting thieves get away a sign of weakness.

I’m not joking when I say that I fucking love this movie. It has absolutely everything I look for when watching movies (specifically action movies): Killer one-liners? Check. Intense action scenes? Check. A main character that is relatable? Check. A sweet rock cover of “The Wheels on the Bus”? Check. Enough plot twists to give Shyamalan an orgasm? Double check. There is not one thing about Heist that I dislike. Not for a long time has movie made me jump to my feet in excitement, but I was found in that position many times when watching Heist. It is a fucking perfect action movie. The characters are unique, the pacing is amazing, the acting is good (well, most of it), and the story is top-notch.

Actually, I did lie when I said there was nothing about Heist that I didn’t like. A better way to phrase it would be that there was nothing Heist that I couldn’t forgive. The film does have a few slip-ups but I was able to look past them because of how awesome it is. One of these issues is with the acting. Every single person does a great job except for the “main” police officer. Her performance is absolute dogshit. It’s like she is made of cardboard and the person voicing her is working minimum wage and therefore doesn’t give a shit. Like I said, I was able to look past this but I had to mention it. There was one other slip-up in an otherwise flawless film, and that was one scene that I believe should have been cut. Heist does a good job of cutting the bullshit, only really having intense action scenes (or at least scenes that build to action). There is one exception however, and that is when Heist decided to focus on a conversation between two of the hostages on the bus; a pregnant lady and a little boy. Not only was the audio laughably bad making everything sound like shitty ADR, the dialogue was absolutely terrible. I guess the scene was there to show that the lady was ‘caring’ for the boy by asking him questions, but of course he is a kid so his answers were far from groundbreaking. This conversation added absolutely nothing to the film, besides making me worried that it was the downfall of the great action movie I was witnessing, and had it been cut the film would have been much tighter. Again I will reiterate, these issues are apparent but easily forgivable because of how great the rest of Heist is. 

It is a pet peeve of mine to say something “restored your faith” in something else, so instead I will say this: Heist reminded me why I watch movies; to find the diamond in the proverbial rough and enjoy the hell out of it. Heist is everything I could ask from an action movie, and maybe even any movie.

I give Heist an A