The Last Heist (2016): You Must See This Movie

All posts in this blog are intended to highlight movies (either really good or really bad) that run the risk of being overlooked by the public. Great movies that are well known to the general public need not apply.

The following movie is in the Bad category:

The Last Heist follows a group of bank robbers led by Paul (Torrance Coombs) who decide to rob a bank that is closing down and thus has a skeleton staff working. Unbeknownst to them a serial killer (Bernard aka the Window Killer, played by Henry Rollins) has intimidated his way into butting in line for the safety deposit box room, something that the bank manager and sole employee seem willing to allow. A hostage situation arises even before they learn this, partly because the employee, Danny (Michael Aaron Milligan) is Paul’s brother who was supposed to be off duty. This gradually leads to all the crooks removing their hoods. Detective Pascal (Victoria Pratt) secures the outside, but her authority is eventually usurped by a group of apparent tactical officers led by Smith (Cris D'Annunzio), who has been pursuing Paul.

This could have been a fun intentionally funny movie but instead is a fun unintentionally funny movie. The crooks are supposed to have a successful track records, but their level of incompetence here (including failing top search a woman’s back pants pocket) forces the viewer to conclude that their success rate is due to them previously hitting the jackpot in terms of encountering law enforcement officers even less competent than they are. There is a splitting up of people, something that shouldn’t still be working is, and there’s a plot twist which pushes things even further into unintentional comedy.

In the acting department it must be said that Henry Rollins does okay. Had the movie been intentional in its humour, Rollins’ performance would still have worked. Most of the other actors give limited performances, including sadly Pratt, who was a lot of fun in her appearances on Once a Thief. Sometimes wooden performances can turn a “so bad it’s good” movie to a simply bad movie, but the plotholes came at me so frequently that the movie didn’t end up suffering, at least not in terms of boring me.

Perhaps the biggest shock is that the movie came out in 2016. Audiences are more savvy now than they used to be, so these days even low budget movies often have a certain logic to them, and the ones that don’t are often simply bad, not so bad they’re good. The Last Heist gives me comfort that entertainingly bad movies are still possible. If you love finding plotholes and logical flaws, you must see this movie.