Shelter

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.

Until the opening credits ended.

Dreadful accents, cliche upon cliche, all with that B-Movie look.

I don't quite know what it is, but you recognize it immediately.

Somebody who really shouldn't have tried to make a movie.

What a waste.

Of time, effort, money. Whatever.

It's a good premise too. We still don't know where all that looted art went. If indeed it went anywhere.

South America?

Private collections?

Swiss Bank vaults?

Such a shame. If only someone had told this director to just STOP.

I felt it was my duty to warn you.

To spare you.

I'll never get those minutes back.

Please DON'T watch this.

The story is good and could have been an amazing film but there was no passion, no chemistry. It felt like watching a table read. Or a very long amateur Tik tok skit. If they do a sequel I hope they improve.

All of the actors can act. Except for the arrogant collector. If he is the one that directed and produced the film then it makes sense why it had good actors, a good story, but not painful to watch. Especially when there are two actors who work together on a very good tv show together. Two characters who have demonstrated that they have chemistry together.

Maybe it can be turned into a Netflix series.

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The over-stylized directing was trying to impress, but ended up being either cringeworthy or laughable, especially the outdated camera techniques and effects like the slow-mo scenes.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.

You'd be better off watching the TV series Leverage. This is similar, but they take themselves way to seriously and it makes it a bit cringe worthy. The acting is also a tad worse in my opinion, because of this. It's cheesy without being funny.

Also for supposed expert thieves they aren't very good at what they do. The fight are pretty painful to watch. Not sure if this was a made for TV movie, but it feels like one.

All that said, if you like heist movies this is okay to watch if you're doing something else, like making dinner or playing a board game. It certainly doesn't need your full attention.