‘How To Rob A Bank’ Review- An Anti-Capitalist Heist Flick That Robs Itself Clean of Bite And Thrills

Another couple weeks within the Hollywood zeitgeist, another eat the rich movie passes by that just isn’t as impactful with its loud commentary as it wants you to think, but rarely is one covered within such insane irony as How to Rob a Bank. In slight fairness, there was likely never a reality where a movie beginning with an opening title card of “An Amazon Original Film” was going to provide a true skewering of the festering rot that is capitalism, but one at least expect for a movie so loud in its obvious commentary to retain some bite even whilst on a corporate dog leash of its own.

How to Rob a Bank, unfortunately, is about as insightful to its topics of elite corruption and screwing over the little guy as a one-minute TikTok that you scroll by within a moment’s notice. Director David Leitch and writer Mark Bianculli attempt to mesh the mechanics of the classic heist drama, oppression of a rigged system, and Gen Z internet culture all into one and they fall flat on virtually every front. There’s simply no life to anything here despite the in your face stylization within every moment of attempted kinetic energy resulting in what’s ultimately a babies’ first eat the rich flick in a world of only slightly older babies’ first eat the rich flicks. For a more recent take on similar territory, see our review of Rich Flu.

The film follows a group of social media savvy bank robbers that have created a viral Youtube series under the name of “How to Rob a Bank” where they record content of them stealing from the corporate banks at the top and give back to those in need, a Gen Z-ifed Robin Hood if you will. The Youtube channel is named “Who’s Hungry?” and is led by the Wolf-masked Ryan (Nicholas Hoult) alongside his crew of Emi (Anna Sawai), Hugo (Rhenzy Feliz), and Vince (Pete Davidson) who all have been wronged by the system in their own ways and rehearse, edit, and release these videos as the ultimate form of sticking it to the man.

As the popularity and follower count of “How to Rob a Bank” grows, and more citizens follow in their footsteps of taking justice where the world failed them, so does the FBI’s confoundment in how precise the “Who’s Hungry?” crew is at hiding all the tracks of their robberies. Agent West (John C. Riley) is in charge of taking down the masked assailants but within his struggles he decides to enlist the assistance of Reagan Gardner (Zoë Kravitz). Reagan is a software engineer under house arrest for various cybercrimes, but she’s created a technology known as FUPOS (or f*ck you piece of s*it as she likes to call it) that might assist in tracking down the Wolf and his crew in what ends up as an all out war for what all these people see as their own forms of justice.

Of course, who wouldn’t find at least some catharsis in a movie that’s so loud about the scheming tactics that the systems of corporate evil inflict on ordinary people nearly everyday. Predatory loans that will never be paid back, a world where even a college degree can’t guarantee you a somewhat well paying job, it’s an ever present economic issue that everyone except the wealthiest of the world who tend to set this precedent can relate to. The problem obviously isn’t these ideas themselves but rather the fact that the film presents them while having virtually nothing of interesting note to say about them. Leitch and Bianculli more often than not mistake brash flashiness for actual substance within the hollow confines of its commentary.

A prime example of this is the dynamics of virtually every character here which leave so much to be desired from both an inner development and their relations to the broader commentary. Each character or dynamic has an inkling of something interesting within it like a reveal around Ryan and Emi’s relationship that has the potential to be emotionally impactful but ends up becoming near laughable in how played out it is in emotional sentimentality by the film’s climax. Every conversation between Reagan and West in particular is so insanely surface level in their differing perspectives of anti-establishment versus still wanting to stay within the rules of a rigged system. It’s to the point where it’s hard to see how literally anyone would be moved by the radical ideas at the center of the film unless it’s their literal first time hearing about them in a world where we’re constantly surrounded by it either in real life or online.

As for the genre mechanics of How to Rob a Bank as an action/heist film, it represents what’s easily the most lifeless work of Leitch’s entire career directorial-wise. The stylization with the Mr. Beast-esque Youtube videos, and TikTok’s that are scattered throughout the film present themselves with the facade of exhilarating propulsion but are only there to disguise the flat nature of both the film’s “How do you do fellow kids?” politics and the lack of any excitement within the action set pieces themselves. It’s a shame considering Leitch, in spite of the inherent smugness of most of his films, is a sturdy action director. He has proven himself with Atomic Blonde and even The Fall Guy, but aside from one admittedly slick car chase sequence where we first see a “Who’s Hungry” scheme go awry, there exist little to cleverness within the execution of its heist formula like it nearly forgets it’s even within the heist/crime subgenre. It’s all flash and pizzazz with no real ingenuity behind the camera or writing to back it up.

Perhaps it’s a fool’s errand to expect a film with multiple Cheetos and Oreos product placement to offer any worthwhile insight to the endless plagues of capitalism, but there can exist some sort of clever commentary within the placement of a film like this with Jeff Bezos’s wallet and the messaging its trying to emphasis on. Instead How to Rob a Bank is an anti-capitalist film that never fails to ring truly hollow in both its attempted appeal towards the generations of the future, and yells into the void of standing up to corporate screwy without actually saying anything of meaning to its societal realities. It all ends up as truly empty, robbing itself of any bite or entertainment one would think would be possible in this premise.