Army of Thieves

Army of Thieves

It is intriguing that “Army of the Dead” by Zack Snyder has turned into a whole franchise in just one night. Can this be the new normal? Not at all that strange is it for a movie to have its sequel green-lit before it is released sometimes they are even produced simultaneously if they tell the same story, such as Peter Jackson’s films but what feels astonishing about Snyder’s return to the world of zombies is that it was born with a prequel and TV series already in production.

What if people did not love “Army”? I suppose Netflix does not worry too much about quality control. So a prequel film, TV series and traditional sequel are somewhere along the streaming pipeline. “Planet of the Dead” will probably be directed by Snyder, while next year will see the premiere of animated series “Army of the Dead: Lost Vegas.”

In the meantime, you can check out today’s Netflix drop, “Army of Thieves,” which has more cuts per minute than any other movie this year designed to hide some serious pacing problems and bland characters. It is a heist-action film that takes forever to get going and whose admittedly fun second half cannot make up for its dull set-up. Snyder stays on as a producer but hands over directing duties on this one to Matthias Schweighöfer, who played safecracker Dieter Ludwig in the zombie film.

The wisecracking criminal was one of the highlights of Snyder’s movie, a nice counterpoint to Dave Bautista and Omari Hardwick’s more traditional alpha males. However, a character who works well as comic relief against the backdrop of something like “Army” does not necessarily work when he becomes the focal point. The biggest problem with “Army of Thieves” may be that it doesn’t feel like anyone except those counting Netflix’s international subscribers was asking for 130 minutes of Dieter.

“Army of Thieves” takes place six years before the events of “Army of the Dead,” as the world is just starting to realize there’s a zombie outbreak we see it mostly on news reports playing on screens in the background, and in a few prophetic dreams that Dieter has. In this story, Dieter (known as Sebastian for reasons explained later) is still early in his safecracking days, and he gives it a go at making a YouTube video about four legendary safes that were built based on Wagner’s Ring Cycle or something.

You know how in “Army of the Dead” Dieter was excited about cracking that famous Gotterdammerung safe? That’s because it was actually just one of four masterfully designed machines. One of Schweighöfer’s strengths as a director/actor is how well he captures Sebastian’s love for these safes they’re not just an obstacle for a criminal; he treats them like an Everest. The challenge is as exciting as the result.

Following his video posts, Sebastian is invited to participate in a secret event called Fight Club with safes. Naturally he wins it and impresses a woman named Gwendoline (Nathalie Emmanuel), who then recruits him for her gang of criminals planning on cracking the remaining three before they get retired. Again, this is somewhat an opportunity story. The next apocalypse will make this much harder so it’s now or never for Gwendoline, Korina (Ruby O. Fee), Rolph (Guz Khan) and Brad Cage (Stuart Martin).

Clearly made for international audiences, “Army of Thieves” is a strange duck as a prequel to an action zombie movie that has very few zombies and even fewer action sequences. The first hour of “Thieves” is interminable an hour before there’s anything that could be described as actual action and there’s just no reason at all for this thing to run over 130 minutes other than Snyder seems to think length constitutes quality.

It’s too bad because “Army of Thieves” does come to life once the planning stops and the heists start happening in earnest. Schweighöfer clearly learned a lot about slo-mo, hyper-stylized action from Snyder as a director but never feels like he’s just copying his collaborator’s eye completely either. The heist scenes are calibrated as carefully as they need to be in a movie like this work they make this prequel nobody asked for at least passably entertaining.

It’s the set-up and repetition that will render that mere diversion into more footnote than expansion though. While Schweighöfer is more charming than I expected as Sebastian, his wide-eyed romantic criminal type works better in small doses and here it’s large doses of Sebastian, so much so that the rest of the crew gets ignored.

Why not just center Sebastian but surround him with other scene-stealers? Emmanuel is boring, never developing the right chemistry with Schweighöfer and she really does come out better than anyone else (although Fee is fun but underserved). Heist movies need full crews like the “Ocean’s” films or even “Now You See Me.” This one fails in that department. Let’s hope the future endeavors of this fully formed franchise learn a lesson from this gang of thieves and steal some ideas from better movies.

Watch Army of Thieves For Free On Gomovies.