‘How to Rob a Bank’ review: This eat-the-rich thriller from Amazon has the psychological depth of a kiddie pool

Earlier this year, I reflected in my review of How to Make A Killing that cinema has been riding a wave of eat-the-rich comedies since 2019, when Parasite and Ready or Not made class conflict into ghoulish fun. Since then, we’ve seen the good (Triangle of Sadness, The Menu, Send Help, I Love Boosters), the bad (How to Make a Killing), and the truly awful (The Running Man reboot).

So, how does How to Rob a Bank, the latest from David Leitch, stack up? Oh, very poorly, and that’s actually shocking at first glance.

Let’s consider the talent behind How to Rob a Bank. For starters, the production is helmed by David Leitch, who’s directed such compelling action movies as Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2, and The Fall Guy. The original screenplay comes from Mark Bianculli, a writer who worked on Hunters, an intense drama about a group that hunts down Nazis. The ensemble cast boasts Nicholas Hoult, Anna Sawai, John C. Reilly, Zoë Kravitz, and Pete Davidson.

All this suggests that a bank robbery thriller centered on class warfare might feature explosive action, challenging ideas, and rich emotional moments. However, produced and distributed by billionaire Jeff Bezos’ Amazon MGM Studios, this eat-the-rich movie never dares to get that deep. Instead, How to Rob a Bank is a flashy, brainless mockery of the great American bank robbery movie. Who could guess why?

How to Rob a Bank dabbles in class politics.

This thriller gets off to a kinetic start by pitching the audience into a band of charismatic bank robbers; they wear animal masks and document their crimes in a YouTube web series that encourages others to follow in their footsteps. Through voiceover narration, their dashing leader Ryan (Hoult) delivers some rapid-fire statistics about the American wage gap, arguing that robbing a bank offers a better chance of financial security than banking on the system playing fair.

Exactly which system Ryan is referring to is left vague in Bianculli’s screenplay. There will be glancing critiques about the mistreatment of military veterans, healthcare under capitalism, and immigration reform, but the focus here is on banks. These robbers explain that banks bleed lenders dry, steal homes, and essentially kill people who can’t afford medical care. These arguments are delivered in bullet-point form, as are the scraps of character development of their central anti-heroes. That makes it hard to feel invested in either.

Instead of delving into the robbers’ lives, the movie cuts to the FBI agent (Reilly) who’s cajoling a bitter hacker (Kravitz) to give him her Batman-level stalker tech to track them down. She agrees reluctantly between bong hits, which make up about 40% of her character, and they set off on a wonky buddy-cop adventure. While this setup has promise, she eats junk food and cracks meh jokes while he furrows his brow to unmask these robbers. It’s far from the sparks and fun of Lethal Weapon or Beverly Hills Cop.

By the time How to Rob a Bank has set up this could-be cat-and-mouse dynamic, the actual exploration of who these thieves are feels like an afterthought. To Hoult’s credit, he and his onscreen wife, Emi (Sawai), manage to muster engaging intimacy in some thin scenes. But all of these backstory scenes reek of tropes and stereotypes.

For instance, Hugo (Rhenzy Feliz) lives in a crowded apartment building, where he provides for his Spanish-speaking grandmother, who we learn later is undocumented. Meanwhile, Ryan and his wife live in a decaying house, where pictures of their deceased child provide an unspoken motive. And then there’s Pete Davidson’s Vince, who lumbers into a treacly scene singing a lullaby to his child, while his wife, Skyler (Tati Gabrielle, who is given nothing to do), looks on smiling.

They aren’t characters but figures propped up by cliché and half-hearted politics the movie has no real interest in. It’s never really clear what Ryan’s big plan is between the robberies and his social media campaign. Is he just seeking revenge? Or is he earnestly pushing for revolution? And if so, what kind? Hoult is given plenty of rabid monologues for the gang’s YouTube audience to enjoy. But who Ryan is behind his wolf mask remains ambiguous, and frankly boring.

How to Rob a Bank is a toothless bank robbery movie.

Nicholas Hoult stars as Ryan, Pete Davidson as Vince, and Rhenzy Feliz as Hugo in in “How to Rob a Bank.”
Credit: Megan Schoenbachler / Amazon MGM Studios

In American cinema, bank robbers have a dubious place of honor alongside gangsters. They are the flip side to the white hat-wearing cowboy, who fights for the good of all by going outside the rules of a polite society. These anti-heroes expose the broken system of American capitalism and its corrupt government, and then suggest that their crimes are a defiant middle finger to it all. To them, they must break the laws to achieve their American dream.

In movies like Dog Day Afternoon, Set It Off, and The Town, audiences are urged to identify with the robbers, who are average folks making extraordinary choices to combat their bad fortune. In each of these films, a great director explores the bank robbers’ psyches and their worlds, so that we, the audience, can relate. Their hopes, fears, and pain become our own. So, when they inevitably suffer a deadly loss in their pursuit of this twisted American dream, we hurt too. And then we’re left to wonder what it means about our world that we can root for armed thieves to topple some aspect of it.

How to Rob a Bank gestures to this classic arc. To Leitch’s credit, the film feels firmly set in Pittsburgh, where long-standing brick buildings, towering yellow bridges, and rolling hills strewn with weathered houses give a distinct look that speaks of America’s promise and decline. He also embraces vibrant color, which adds pizzazz to the robbers and their online videos. But when it comes to creating complex characters who can make an onscreen death hit hard, he falls absolutely flat.

Sure, there’s that scene where one of the gang will inevitably be slain by stone-faced police. But this time it won’t hit, because How to Rob a Bank‘s characters all feel like gestures to a point of view, be it disillusioned, revolutionary, apathetic, or dedicated to the status quo. They don’t feel real enough to move us, because How to Rob a Bank is in such a rush to plop in action set pieces.

And how are those action set pieces? Underwhelming. Sure, there’s gunfire, car chases, motorcycle races through untamed woods, and street-level mayhem. None of it is all that memorable. As someone who fell hard for the jaw-dropping stunts and awesome battles of Atomic Blonde, I take no joy in telling you that it feels like Leitch is phoning it in here.

To the ensemble’s credit, they do seem committed to making the most out of thin characters, stale jokes, and nattering political rhetoric. But they can’t elevate a script that is juvenile in its politics and devastatingly uninterested in challenging its audience.

In the end, How to Rob a Bank adds nothing to the conversation about the wealth gap. Instead, the movie callously steals markers from online political discourse to use as flair, which is haphazardly flung upon a subgenre framework meant to stir up an audience and then haunt them with a film’s final moments. This gutless knockoff gives no thought-provoking turns or heart-wrenching reveals. Then it delivers an ending that’s senseless and pointless. Simply put, this movie could have been a meme.

How to Rob a Bank opens in theaters Nov. 13.