The Art of the Steal (2014)

The Art of Wasting Talent

The most brilliant filmmakers use style to tell a story, or to make a point, or to evoke a feeling. And then there are others that use style because they really have nothing at all to say and don't know what else to do to cover it up. Sometimes it works well enough to make it an interesting enough exercise in part, and other times it only works to annoy and distract the audience from better elements that could have made it at least more fun.

In the latter category we have The Art of the Steal, a heist comedy written and directed by Jonathan Sobol. It stars a pretty nice collection of actors - Kurt Russell, Matt Dillon, Terence Stamp, and Jay Baruchel among others - but more on that in a moment.


Kurt Russell plays Crunch Calhoun, a stunt motorcycle jumper and a former "wheelman" for art heists that has gone straight since being betrayed by his brother Nicky, played by Matt Dillon, and spending 5 years in a Polish prison. Despite their differences, Nicky shows up in Canada, where Crunch now lives, and eventually Crunch is sucked back into a scheme to make some money off of stolen art. Baruchel plays Crunch's assistant and he gets pulled into the scheme along with Crunch's wife and old gang, and they are all pursued by an Interpol agent played by Jason Jones (The Daily Show) who is being assisted by a former art thief played by Stamp.

Twists and turns, twists and turns. I guess we're supposed to be sucked into the heist scheme the group cooks up and then be surprised when everything turns out to be a question of who is scamming who, but if you can't see through what's going on pretty much right from the start, then I can't help you. Now, don't get me wrong: Sobol does lie to you to try and create some suspense. Flat out lies to the audience as a last ditch effort to keep the machinations secret (alas, he really only hides the how, not the what).

If you're going to have a movie of twists and turns, the idea is to have the whole thing out in the open and then, when everything is revealed, to have the audience look back and enjoy the fun of putting it all together from what they've seen. But here there's a whole set of revelations at the end that make you realize that the filmmaker just lacked the ability to put together a ruse good enough to play it straight for the audience. Sobol hid so much that an entire montage is needed at the end to reveal all of the filmmaker's deceptions toward the audience. Are we supposed to be grateful? Not me. I just feel disrespected when I get this kind of treatment from a filmmaker.

And, yet, even with all of the deceptions aimed at the audience, it's hard to be fooled - the story just isn't original enough to do that. We're just left to see how it all plays out and hope there's something original at some point.

That there is a scam and a heist here and there doesn't make the film inherently entertaining. The scams and heists aren't interesting enough on their own so Sobol employs various stylistic flourishes to try and goose things up. It's a jokey title card here, some whirling cameras there, blaring music all over the place, putting eight panels on the screen there, and loading up with narration to add some smirky dialogue to boot. It doesn't really help the story or even do anything that hasn't been done a million times before - all it does is serve to annoy and distract.

And it is that distraction that is the greatest sin of all. When you don't have a terribly original story, create some good characters. If nothing else, when you hire guys like Russell, Dillon, and Stamp, let their ability to fill the screen carry the film. Russell isn't ever going to be thought of as his generation's Brando, but the man has charisma. Use it! Instead, Sobol lacks the confidence or attention span to let the good cast he's assembled make something out of this mess. Sobol's too busy cutting back and forth from here and there that he tramples all over the performances. Stamp comes off the best, but unfortunately he's paired with Jones, who comes off the worst.

There's a scene in particular that comes to mind as troubling: when Russell, Dillon, Baruchel, and others plot out the big heist. Sobol cuts between this scene and them actually carrying it out while their dialogue from the plotting carries the soundtrack. I suppose doing it this way saves running time, but it would have been far more interesting to never leave the scene of them planning. With these actors (and this plot) it's their performances and their interactions we want to see, not them running around with smirks on their faces as they narrate the heist (which isn't very clever). Whatever intensity there could have been between the actors, or whatever color they could have lent to the characters is completely chopped up and wasted. It's like having a beautiful portrait and then drawing X's all over it because you're afraid a portrait isn't exciting enough on its own. All you end up with is a ruined painting - or in this case a few wasted name actors.

Ultimately, all of Sobol's stylistic flourishes fail to hide the film's shortcomings. They only manage to hide what virtues the film could have had and compound the film's lack of originality. It's not a complete affront - the quality of the performers in front of the camera assure that there's always a pulse, if not much of a heart. Still, it was a fair disappointment for everyone in the theater watching this on a Friday night - all five of us.

Screened in the theater.