Shelter

Annabel (Lisa Vidal) leads a group of thieves who are tasked by Holocaust survivors to retrieve art stolen by the Nazis during WWII.

The concept is interesting. The 1985 section is intriguing. I'm willing to go with the premise. Then the group recruits two Latinas and Cam Gigandet. This is treating the group like every other heist movie. The movie fills the crew with people skilled at individual tasks. It's trying to be Oceans. It misses the point of the base concept. The big takeaway with these characters shouldn't be skills. They should be believers. It's also weird for Jews to hire a Latino crew to take down Nazis. One would expect more Jewish content in the crew. The heist is not that great. There are bad turns. The general filmmaking is weak. It's all weak.

As other reviewers have said, why was tis movie even made?

The title, cool images, and even the opening music told me I was in for a fun movie. 10 minutes later I was logging in to read the plot and reviews just to see if I was watching the movie I thought I was watching.

So this <40 year old is the leader of a secret organization and capable of acquiring financial support. Also very capable of sensual appeal and knows where to find a good hair and nail salon.

The movie could have been a 40 minute television show, ala. It Takes a Thief or one of the several other shows from the 70s.

The crew are all enjoyable, the tech is good, the ease with which things are done is expected and the outcome is very weak.

Bad people do deserve punishment, but hitting them directly won't cut it. Stealing from bad guys really relies on a series of assumptions and careful planning, but having a safety net is like having hidden pieces on the chessboard to prevent moles and set up moles. Seeing from the trailer that a group of people with various skills are getting together to plan an art heist, it's such an exciting and tense scenario that builds up anticipation. You're waiting to see each team member shine in their roles, but the actual content spends quite a bit of time setting up the legitimacy of the art heist, which takes away from the unexpected surprises. Comparing it to another incredible movie about outsmarting bad guys and stealing their stuff, "Now You See Me," it falls a bit short, to be honest.

This has to be the worst directed, written and acted film I've seen in a long time. The over-stylized directing was trying to impress, but ended up being either cringeworthy or laughable, especially the outdated camera techniques and effects like the slow-mo scenes. This felt like a high school drama class production from the 90's, and I've seen more exciting and more realistic made-for-TV caper films from Lifetime and Aurora Teagarden Mysteries.

Then you have the overly cliched writing with matching characters and dialogue, that was parts from every other film in this genre, but this was done much worse. There was nothing unique or engaging besides the overall premise of the story, than ended up playing out like a cheap wannabe heist film. None of the characters were convincing, and much of that blame goes to the director for failing to direct his cast properly, and some blame falls on the writer who gave us the most annoying character played by Cam Gigandet. You will literally eye-roll and cringe at his character - demeanor, dialogue, etc, the entire runtime.

Even in its normally comfortable 91 min runtime, this entire film was dragged out with plot and technical issues in between every cliche available to this genre. It was just an unnecessary film written and directed so lazily, you'll cringe in all the moments that are supposed to be funny, and laugh at many serious scenes, like when the gold bar is being pawned and is being handled like a hollow piece of plastic. There is zero realism, suspense or thrills in this laughably failed caper.

It's a very generous 4/10 from me, because I can forgive certain rookie filmmaking mistakes. But there were far too many I couldn't overlook to recommend anyone waste their time seeing this like I did.

Good story and could be a great watch. However, it's a badly directed movie, which makes this film boring to watch. Cust is not good either. I watched this movie for about 10 minutes and gave up. It's like watching in high school theater low-level play. What could have been a pretty solid heist story is thwarted by budgetary shortcomings, bits of awkward or confusing writing, and draggy direction that makes things feel like they're taking too long. Viewers are forced to deal with unremarkable characters and stale banter, which doesn't sell the electricity of the players and their specific game.