Written by Steve Allrich and Mark Williams
Directed by Mark Williams
Starring Liam Neeson, Kate Walsh, Jai Courtney, Jeffrey Donovan and Anthony Ramos
Running time: 1 hour and 39 minutes
MPAA rating: PG-13 for strong violence, crude references and brief strong language

by Audrey Callerstrom

Going into Honest Thief, it was my hope, in spite of a rather bland trailer, that I could be surprised. There are some truly ridiculous scripts that Liam Neeson brings an utter seriousness to as the lead. It’s why his cameo in Ted 2 was so funny. I don’t think that anything that happened in Non-Stop is remotely plausible, but I’ll be damned if I wasn’t hooked. Same with The Grey and The Commuter. Honest Thief never quite matches either side of the Neeson spectrum, falling somewhere in the middle, in a role that could have been done by anyone. Name an actor. Yes. That one. That one would be fine.

Neeson plays a quiet, remorseful bank robber who is eager to turn it all around when he meets Annie (Kate Walsh). In their Meet Cute, Annie, who manages the storage lockers where Tom (Neeson) stores his loot, flirts with Tom and acts adorable, as if she does this with every customer. BOOM. Love. That’s how it happens. One year passes, as we know by the title cards, and the fact that not one, but both characters acknowledge that it’s been one year. I’m not clear. Has it been a year? They’re looking at moving in together, and Tom wants to come clean: he is the unfortunately-named “In-And-Out Bandit” (snort) and has robbed a total of $9 million dollars from 12 banks across 7 states. The only thing is, we never see Tom robbing a bank, arguably the most thrilling part of the concept. The movie spares us these moments of Tom the Criminal, and starts with Tom The Good Guy. He recounts his method to agents and, while clever, it’s just not the same.

Honest Thief, in a tepid, PG-13 way, spares us all the interesting moments of Tom’s criminal past and throws us into a bloodless, boring tale of traitorous FBI agents. There’s Agent Myers (Jeffrey Donovan, Burn Notice), Agent Baker (Robert Patrick, Terminator 2), Agent Nivens (Jai Courtney, Suicide Squad), and Agent Hall (Anthony Ramos, Hamilton). Here is how two-dimensional these people are: Agent Myers is Nice, Agent Baker is dead (whoops!), Agent Nivens is NOT nice and Agent Hall is Nice, but Misled. A 12-year-old could follow this film and, arguably, write it. It has a very “ready for TBS” feel. Tom’s efforts to come clean are usurped by Nivens and Hall who see this as a good opportunity to steal Tom’s money and peg him as another “nutcase” who provided a false confession. There are a couple car chases, a couple of bombs (Tom was a demolitions expert in the Marines, hence the ability to break into safes) and some really bad CGI fire. It looked like fire from a video game. From 10 years ago.

Honest Thief is the second film from director Mark Williams, following 2016’s A Family Man, a movie I will assume you haven’t seen, and if you have, I would like to know the exact circumstances of how and why. It is written by Williams and Steve Allrich, who cobbled this story together using bits and pieces of (slightly) better films and tropey dialogue. “It wasn’t supposed to go down like this.” “He didn’t deserve to die.” “You can’t just shoot people!” At one point Agent Nivens uses the phrase “popping your cherry” (shudder). When all the remaining characters meet together at the end, there’s such a feeling of obligation between them, as though each actor was shoved from behind to deliver a few lines as the film flops toward its lazy conclusion.

Honest Thief is available to watch October 16th.