Ashens and the Polybius Heist

A decent independent movie. The previous Ashens movie was a good effort but you needed to be a fan of cult movies to appreciate it. This one however is really good. Wonderfull British humour and good acting. If you are into British humour and can appriciate the geeky theme then this movie will not dissapoint you.

The cast was well chosen and the story kept you interested. The characters had enough dept and all contributed to the movie. There was only one gag that seemed a bit out of place but I can easily look past that one.

First of all, it's rather good. The producers obviously invested in their crew and chose their cast with care, and it shows. Do you need to be an Ashens or Nerdcubed fan already to enjoy the film? I don't think so.

I was relieved to see more of a gender balance than is implied by the poster. The principle women are all excellent and help to lift the film, otherwise it could be conceived as a tad misogynistic.

Overall, the film packs quite a pace. It's funny, engrossing and likeable.

Stuart Ashen himself is a very solid actor - low-key, natural, with a good voice. Dan Hardcastle was top dollar. I also thoroughly enjoyed the OTT villains. Together with Joanna O'Connor, Jarred Christmas knocked my socks off, and their scenes were an absolute delight. I also found Ashens' and Christine's journey a pleasant surprise, providing unexpected emotional depth which came as a welcome contrast to the comedy antics of the Heist team.

There are times when you can see the film-making process has been rushed, a couple of scenes where you feel Barmania must have wished he'd had more time. Others where you can truly appreciate the precision and care taken with set-up and framing. The look of the film costume-wise is unexpectedly stylish.

When you consider the scope of the production, the budget and timescales, you have to give immense credit to Barmania for pulling it all off.

Relentless Films should be very pleased. This is a tremendous start.

Once again Ashens graces us with a legit film, featuring more geeky humour than ever before and hoping to dial everything ut to 11 for a knockout sequel.

Fortuneately this film is vastly superior to the first, which was more of an experiment to see if the concept of Stuart Ashen looking for weird put there gaming artifacts would stick. The first, if you remember had some bits that really worked and others that were just cringe inducing, but even so it was recieved well enough for a sequel.

The Polybius Heist already stands on better feet than it's predecessor, the acting has drastically improved across the board (there is an exception I will get to later) and while the overall goal of this film is pretty much the same as the first, the way that goal is written towards is really well done.

Now the acting exception. Daniel Hardcastle is awful in this film, I've no idea how he managed to get into this film, every line he reads is read exactly the same way and similar tone of voice, he cannot do subtlety or even clearly speak.

This was certainly a decent movie. A couple of parts did make me physically wince. Co-writer Stuart Ashen referring to himself as "famous". Really? The use of "whatever" twice in the first scene. Just lazy. Was it the same shot used twice too? God I hope not.

It's a good comedy heist. All the pieces are in place and it goes at a good pace.

Stuart Ashen plays a version of himself and can certainly act. I thought he could cultivate a bit more vim though. Benny (Eli Silverman) is good but could tighten up his delivery in places. Kept reminding me of a younger Bill Bailey. Agonist (Stuart Barter) needed a much firmer directional hand. I have a feeling that his Stuggy rep had director Barmania twitten, so he let him spend a lot of time delivering his dialogue to the floor. A shame as he was genuinely funny and on point at times, showing flashes of what can only be described as genius and a rapid, quirky delivery on a par with Jessica Stevenson in Spaced, so it's a pity Barmania didn't encourage greater discipline as it would have paid dividends. Jarred Christmas on the other hand managed to be also slightly famous and across the board excellent. He and lawnmower-woman did beautiful things together. In fact, she (Joanna O'Connor) was excellent too, and reminded me at times of original Leia. Wondered if this was on purpose? My other front runners would be the lovely Vocal (Katia Kvinge) and Yiannis (Yiannis Vassilakis). Kvinge's downtrodden Irish misanthropic misfit was very convincing, with a refreshingly natural delivery and she nailed all but one of her accents. Vassilakis waded through a large amount of ill-judged character material and somehow still came out smelling of roses. Very William Thacker. Dan Hardcastle surprised me by being rather good with excellent comic timing. A couple of times he was slightly undermined by Vassilakis pulling focus a bit at the side of a shot. Oh lord yes, Dan Tomlinson. Well, he got better, but his first few lines! Who let him get away with that? Jeez. I should also mention Jonathan Ashen (Nigel Fairs) who I thought was brilliant, if underused. He could teach Barter a thing or two about focus. Lesson to Barmania, it's not all about the celebs.

Smaller parts I really liked were mattress man, heist bucket man, the weary security guard who had to put up with Jake/Kevin and, naturally, the ever-excellent Robert Llewellyn.

The film looks good, the cinematography is of a high standard, the sound effects are particularly well thought out and it's certainly a bonus to watch with headphones so you can enjoy the extra nuances.

This film set itself two very difficult goals.

The first - creating a comedy heist movie at all - it succeeds at very well. The characters are neither so competent that they are distant, nor so incompetent that the heist itself is unconvincing; the percieved difficulty of the heist is pitched just right, the characters' failing are understandable and identifable, and it strictly limits the amount of humor that comes from character incompetence. The production quality is also remarkably high, especially for the budget involved.

The second challenge is making a character-driven movie featuring YouTubers, who (regardless of acting ability) have the difficulty of their existing fanbases associating them wholly with their "YouTube mood". Ashens himself comes off best, due to his previous acting experience, his fanbase's knowledge of his previous films, and his dry-comedy theme; but as mentioned elsewhere, Dan Hardcastle clearly suffers from trying to play his YouTube persona "Nerd Cubed" in a way his viewers would expect (they even named his character "The Cube"), which leaves his character reacting to a disasterous development like.. well, a YouTuber reacting to an abrupt Game Over on a Let's Play video, rather than a person who is actually in imminent and increasing danger of going to prison for 20 years.

The difficulties of the second by no means overcome the success of the first, though, and the film works extremely well as a convincing heist with some genuinely hilarious moments.

There are a few down spots, though, in part caused by the film's habit of integrating meta-humour about directorial tropes and film-making at odd moments. This often comes up in the backgrounds or details of the film, sometimes so dramatically that it comes close to being its own CinemaSins reel, but when it gets pushed to the foreground it becomes more awkward. The scene where the villain has to pursue Ashens while both are moving extremely slowly through motion detectors probably sounded hilarious on paper but when actually filmed you realize it's just two people moving really slowly in gaits that don't make sense; it looks like a good chunk of that scene was edited out, for good reason.

By far the cringiest of these points was one which a sign inside the facility is written purely in Greek, entirely so that the (otherwise incompetent) Greek-speaking character accidentally recruited by the team can turn out to be crucial. I suspect this was intended as a parody of this trope in team movies, but with no explanation it comes across as so contrived as to just be a horrible example of that trope rather than a joke about it.

As previously stated, though, the highs and the general quality outweight the lows, and while this film will obviously appeal much more to fans of the YouTubers involved, to nerds, and to fans of Ashens' style of humor (whether or not they have heard of the man himself), it's a fun watch for anyone, especially those with prior experience of heist movies.