.png)
The opening heist scene in the stylish and intermittently entertaining but convoluted and derivative “Steal” plays like a greatest hits montage of scenes from similar films and series. You got your overhead shots of the major metropolitan city—in this case, London—accompanied by the obligatory pulse-pounding techno score. You got your well-dressed robbers, all wearing shades of black and gray that make them look exactly like well-dressed robbers, donning fingerprint-masking rubber gloves and checking their automatic weapons and phone jammers. You got the heist team bursting into the glass-paneled offices—in this case, a fiduciary pension fund manager called Lochmill Capital—and the Head Villain announcing, “Ladies and gentlemen, if you do exactly what I say when I say it, you won’t get hurt. If you don’t do what I say when I say it, you will be shot.”
And then of course you get that moment where someone speaks out of turn and gets cracked with the butt of a gun.
Off we go on a six-part series on Prime Video that will remind you of similar (and often superior) modern streaming thrillers, from “The Night Manager” to “Money Heist” to “Slow Horses” to “The Terminal List.” It’s no spoiler to reveal that a seemingly ordinary heist is never that simple that befuddled investigators will be soon be speculating that this was the work of “Ex-Army [or] ex-Special Services [or] maybe state actors,” and there might even be some sort of vast conspiracy involved—a conspiracy that GOES ALL THE WAY TO THE TOP.
Along the way, we’ll get flashbacks filling us in on the circumstances that led to the big job, main characters finding themselves struggling to keep their balance on shifting moral grounds, impressively choreographed cloak-and-dagger sequences, and a number of whiplash-inducing twists and turns, some more plausible than others. “Steal” is a well-made series with crisp editing, fine performances and serviceable writing and direction, but at times the plot gets bogged down in exposition about financial subterfuge and somewhat arbitrary moments of betrayals—and there’s an awful lot of talk about “cold wallets,” which are basically the floppy disks of 2020s spy thrillers. It’s decidedly un-sexy stuff.
The best thing about “Steal” is the unvarnished and deliberately messy lead performance by Sophie Turner as Zara, a member of the trade-processing team at Lochmill Capital. At first glance, Zara might appear to be a cool and on-trend young woman on the London scene; she works in a sleek high-rise, she can put together a fabulous ensemble of autumnal colors, and after all, she looks like Sophie Turner. On second take, however, it’s clear Zara is something of a mess. The first time we see Zara, she’s at work, “stuck in the loo, with a nosebleed,” something that occurs when she’s hungover, which happens quite a bit, as Zara often gets pissed with her mates in order to forget she’s stuck in a dead-end job and seems to have no relationships outside of work other than the rare visit with her rancorous mother. When the heist team swoops in, Zara and her fidgety best pal Luke (Archie Madekwe from “Midsommar” and “Saltburn”) are forced to push through a series of transactions that will empty out over £4 billion in pensions belonging to working class and middle-class workers, which makes this a particularly heinous crime. Once the team has absconded, Zara takes it upon herself to conduct a perilous, sub rosa investigation—for reasons we won’t reveal.
Jacob Fortune-Lloyd lends an air of charm as Detective Chief Inspector Rhys Covac, who becomes Zara’s ad hoc partner in (solving) crime—a task made more difficult by Covac’s personal demons. The mission to retrieve the electronic funds winds down various tributaries, as a powerful and corrupt billionaire, MI5 and other interested parties get involved, to the point where it’s nearly impossible to separate the heroes from the villains. (It’s all very murky, per usual in these tales.)
One of the failings of “Steal” is the collective lack of dark charisma within that heist team, who come across as a bunch of generic types who watched “Die Hard” too many times. They are so thinly drawn that IMDb and other credit sites list them as “London,” “Tall,” “Glasses,” “Burly,” et al. The mastermind (Jonathan Slinger) is initially intriguing, but he’s often reduced to the sidelines in favor of the brutish and hot-headed thug “Sniper” (Andew Howard), who is such a violent idiot that it’s a wonder he would even know how to access a cold wallet. Most damning of all, the big reveal in the finale feels overly engineered, especially when we replay everything that has transpired to that point.
Sophie Turner is outstanding, and Zara is an undeniably complex and empathetic character. “Steal” leaves open the possibility of a Season 2. Give Zara a better adventure, and we’ll sign up.
Whole season screened for review. Premieres on January 21.
from Roger Ebert https://ift.tt/cOgu2QS
.png)
