Bandit is a type of true-crime movies the place you come away with the impression that the film-makers have spent a bit too lengthy hanging out with their topic, sitting in smoky bars listening to tall tales concerning the good ol’ unhealthy days. It’s honest sufficient however tells an completely hokey and indulgent story about armed robber Gilbert Galvan, who went on a stick-up spree throughout Canada within the Eighties, pulling off almost 60 robberies in three years concentrating on banks and jewellers. Newspapers referred to as him “the flying bandit”.
The movie paints Galvan’s crimes as roughly victimless – repeatedly exhibiting what a well mannered and cordial financial institution robber he’s, by no means firing a gun. It’s a shiny old school film, mixing a little bit of motion with tongue-in-cheek comedy. Josh Duhamel provides a efficiency that’s all allure and no depth as Galvan, a profession prison we first meet escaping from a Michigan jail and hightailing it north of the border. In Ottawa, he modifies his identify to Robert Whiteman and will get into the armed theft enterprise, bankrolled by an area prison hardman (Mel Gibson, about as menacing as a fairy cake).
Galvan’s first fumbling stick-up is performed for laughs. “How did I do?” he asks the cashier on the finish. And there’s a number of focus right here on his foolish wigs and comedy disguises – what a nice-guy financial institution robber he’s. (You’ll be able to image the director’s directions to the actors enjoying the financial institution cashiers: “Look scared, however not that scared”.) The movie is on fairly skinny ice too with its shaky justifications for Galvin’s lifetime of crime. He had a troublesome childhood, we be taught, and when he meets trainee social employee Andrea (Elisha Cuthbert), he retains on with the robberies to offer for his household. Duhamel is at all times a simple, likable watch, and it is a moderately entertaining movie – however not precisely plentiful with perception.
