American Heist Shallower Than Payday 2

With a title like “American Heist,” you can pretty much guarantee you’re going to be getting either a generic heist movie, or a satire of generic heist movies. Given that the film is a direct-to-VOD release, chances are you can already figure out which one of the two it is. There’s nothing to be found in American Heist that you haven’t seen in either any bank robbery movie ever, or Payday 2. The latter is actually a pretty apt comparison, as both have pretty much the same amount of story and depth. Actually, Payday 2 might have more of each, and if you’ve ever played Payday 2, you know that its setup is about the bare minimum. Hayden Christensen is our lead, here playing James, a former getaway driver who, after serving a short stint in the clink, has started to turn his life around. He’s got a good job, has started to reconnect with an ex-girlfriend, Emily (Jordana Brewster), and is even looking at trying to move up in the world. But when his brother, Frankie (Adrien Brody) gets released from prison, things begin to go sideways, because if your brother was a tatted-up Adrien Brody, it’d be hard to continue to walk the straight and narrow. Hayden Christensen, for example, is a blank entity who’s so lacking in charisma that you have to wonder if he realized what project he’s signed up for and decided to just sleepwalk his way through it. Jordana Brewster is a nonentity as the love interest, making you wonder why she’s here except to raise the stakes by being a target for the gangsters to force Christensen’s character to go along with the plan. Their obligatory romance subplot gets maybe three scenes, and it’s laughably bad. Tory Kittles and Akon are both boring gangsters who deliver little in the way of acting chops. Brody’s the only actor who puts in any effort, and it’s just a shame that you can’t ever believe him in the role. There aren’t a lot of good heist movies being made nowadays, and American Heist, from its generic title all the way to its bored-looking actors, is the prototype for the bad ones. It takes a bunch of genre tropes, throws them together with a story that makes Payday 2 look impressive, and then hopes that it works. It doesn’t. Not at all. Adrien Brody, miscast as he is, is the only worthwhile part of American Heist, and he can’t even come close to saving it. Bottom Line: An utterly generic heist movie, American Heist is awful from start to finish. Recommendation: Don’t see American Heist. Don’t think about American Heist. [rating=1]