Art Squad: Gli artisti del furto

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.

No pun intended - the question is what or rather which crime we are talking about ... with the ending suggesting this could get into overtime ... or rather could spawn sequels ... there are worse things out there of course ... still this is no Oceans Eleven (or how many they are in the group ... six? I really didn't care to count ... not to mention ... but let's not get into details).

I like Cam for example, but his character here is way over the top. His introduction chasing a teenager ... bugging him is almost fun ... especially considering the rebel he was playing in the OC show ... but he gets annoying really quick ... and not in a good way. Still if you like heist movies ... with twists every now in a while ... well ... this is decent to watch (no pun intended once again)

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The over-stylized directing was trying to impress, but ended up being either cringeworthy or laughable, especially the outdated camera techniques and effects like the slow-mo scenes.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

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.