Army of Thieves review: This heist movie adds nothing to Army of the Dead

Army of Thieves, Matthias Schweighöfer’s prequel to Zack Snyder’s rollicking Las Vegas zombie heist flick Army of the Dead, borrows Snyder’s visual flourishes and knowing humor. It also asks a bold question Snyder’s film neglected: How exciting is safecracking in this world without the zombies that defined the first film? It’s not that exciting. It’s about as thrilling as watching a hacker slap away at a keyboard.

Army of the Dead, lovable, scrawny German safecracker Ludwig Dieter (Schweighöfer) teams with a band of rough-and-tumble mercenaries to rob a zombie-infested Las Vegas hotel by breaking into a near-unbreakable safe called the Götterdämmerung. The opening scene Army of Thieves, set six years earlier, Dieter is sitting in his quaint apartment in Postad, Germany recording a YouTube video about the vault’s history. Created by Hans Wagner, a locksmith sickened by the death of his wife and son, four super-safes take their names from the Ring Cycle: Das Rheingold, Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods). Wagner had to lock himself into one of these safes and have it drop to the bottom.

The legend is a favorite bedtime story for Dieter, who dreams about finding and beating Wagner’s safes. Gwendoline (NathalieEmmanuel), an Interpol-reported thief, offers him the chance to fulfill his dream. She recruits him for a series of heists that involves three safes.

Photo: Stanislav Honzik/Netflix

Army of ThievesIt was designed to make Netflix a franchise, giving rise to cinematic universes that are similar to the one DC and Marvel have created for years. But Schweighöfer’s prequel fails to offer the same level of excitement or gore as Snyder’s film. The heists are all snoozing affairs, and ultimately, the film succumbs to the script’s franchise ambitions.

Schweighöfer’s origin-story film begins on a strong note by telling audiences more about the delightful nerd Dieter, known in this story as Sebastian Schlencht-Wöhnert. Sebastian waltzes through life with the same routine: He puts on a blue windowpane suit, gets a banana nut muffin and coffee from the local café, and reports to his crummy bank job. It’s a staid existence that’s changed by two events: There are reports of a zombie apocalypse happening in America, and there’s one lone, solitary view and comment on his YouTube video, instructing him to report to a secret house with the password “Götterdämmerung.”

Shay Hatten created the cheeky script.John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum), tries to emulate Snyder’s bleak humor. Sebastian discovers an underground tournament for safecrackers at the house, populated with punkish contestants like Fireball, Valiant and Neo. The tease of another nefarious underworld recalls Hatten’s work in the John Wickuniverse. However, the tantalizing and absurdist tale about two too-cool for school safecrackers going head to head is dropped in favour of a conventional story.

Gwendoline introduced Sebastian to her team using the same narrative beats: Rolph (Guz Kan), a getaway driver with insane driving skills; Korina, (Ruby O.), who is an expert hacker. Fee), Brad Cage (Stuart Martin), a archetypal action hero, who gained inspiration to lift weights after watching Nicolas Cage. Con Air Contrary to the gang Army of the DeadNone of the characters have an ounce emotional depth and their group dynamics are thin. Gwendoline for example wants Dieter cracking the trio of Wagner safes, in an effort to reach legendary status. But the script does very little work to make her desire or her team’s interest in going along for the ride feel believable. Each safe is filled with a lot of money. However, Dieter cracks them and the bandits are unable to get any.

The same lack of motivation goes for Interpol agents Delacroix (Jonathan Cohen) and his partner Beatrix (Noémie Nakai). Delacroix’s obsession with the group stems from Brad shooting him in the buttocks. That’s a slim motivation for him, and it’s unclear why he’s chasing vengeance and Gwendoline and company are obsessed with cracking a trio of safes when everyone knows the zombie apocalypse is spreading. Shouldn’t the entire world be thrown into panic?

Photo: Stanislav Honzik/Netflix

Franchise-building’s narrow goals are a waste of time. Army of ThievesIt’s all down to the rind. The origin of Sebastian’s eventual Ludwig Dieter pseudonym is tied to a comic book, with cringeworthy abandon. Sebastian has nightmares of zombies attacking him and setting the scene for the storybeat. Army of the DeadFor protection, he puts himself inside a safe. And the film’s prologue connects directly to Snyder’s flick, through a flash-forward sequence. The only variation Schweighöfer takes is in the look and the feel of his movie: It isn’t nearly as bleak. Brightly lit and with far less gunplay, it also isn’t as gruesome — or as entertaining, for that matter. The film is drowned in quirky humor.

Army of Thieves’ gravest sin, however, isn’t its reedy characters, unadventurous spirit, or cloying franchise-building. They are just all boring. The trio of safes are supposed to be located in three different countries: France, the Czech Republic and Switzerland — but you wouldn’t know about the teased globetrotting, judging from the scant visual hints about any scene’s location. Borrowing from other heist films, Schweighöfer uses a montage of characters enacting the heist in their heads to build tension. Their plan is lackluster, so the old tactic doesn’t work. One heist, dripping with references to Kathryn Bigelow’sPoint BlankThe result is a nauseating shot of gunfight, which Bernhard Jasper captured with an obsessive handheld.

The final hurdle, initially taking place at a casino — sound familiar? — is totally undercut by setting the final safecracking scene elsewhere. At every turn, Schweighöfer tries to make Sebastian’s solitary enterprise thrilling, but he misunderstands the character and the heist genre. Sebastian tells his colleagues in without being asked. Army of the Dead about the mythology around the Götterdämmerung, it’s cute and endearing. Gwendoline is also enthralled when he uses the Wagner cycle as a way to express his feelings for him and to justify safes. And by revolving a film totally around safecracking, he misses that the draw of a heist movie isn’t breaking into a safe, it’s the plan used to gain access and escape with the rewards afterward.

Army of Thieves doesn’t crack the franchise puzzle, mostly because the movie doesn’t provide sufficient reason for one to exist. Dieter was an adorable highlight. Army of the Dead, but this film doesn’t offer any greater understanding of him. When the final scene tacks on footage from Snyder’s film in a decidedly disjointed aesthetic switch, the emotional throughline from this version of Dieter to the version we see six years later is barely perceptible. A prequel might have been necessary, but seeing Scott Ward’s (Dave Bautista), and his crew go through during the zombie apocalypse would have provided enough punch. Instead, Schweighöfer’s prequel loses the winning combination this charming character possessed in Snyder’s flick, in lieu of a yawn-inducing vault toward nothingness.

Army of ThievesYou can stream Netflix right now