Mark Reviews Movies: BANDIT (2022)

Bandit, Quiver Distribution

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 22, 2022

Beyond the fact that it's based on a true story, Bandit tells the familiar tale of a thief with good intentions, the cops hunting him, and the misguided ambitions that lead to his downfall. Screenwriter Kraig Wenman does offer almost enough unexpected turns and bigger-picture observations to make the material rise above its obvious formula, but by the end, it mostly feels as if we've seen a predictable story that bypasses its better ideas and rests on its most obvious ones.

This tells the true story, based on Robert Knuckle's book, of Gilbert Galvan Jr., a convicted fraudster who, in the mid-1980s, escapes from a minimum-security prison in Michigan and flees to Canada. There, he adopts the identity of Robert Whiteman by buying a government ID from a homeless man. Wenman and director Allan Ungar make sure to note that such events actually happened with on-screen text, and most of those details aren't quite as outrageous as the filmmakers think they are.

"Robert" is played by Josh Duhamel in a performance of easy charm. The fake Robert's story begins as romance between him and Andrea (Elisha Cuthbert), a woman who works at a shelter that he calls home while trying to make an honest living. The economy of the 1980s, though, puts Robert's dreams of having a normal life—the opposite of what he had growing up—on hold. Using stage makeup and his easygoing personality, he quickly learns he's a pretty skilled bank robber.

The movie's acknowledgment of the period's economic insecurity goes a long way toward making Robert sympathetic, although the filmmakers' observations end there. That's fine for the movie's intentions, since the main point is to show the gusto and the ease with which Robert goes about becoming a prolific bank robber. An unexpected and slightly refreshing invention here makes Andrea, not quite an accomplice, but definitely a supporter of her partner's work, instead of just being the deceived and wronged woman waiting at home.

Eventually, though, the focus shifts to Robert's criminal partnership with Tommy (Mel Gibson), a crime boss who might be like the father Robert never quite had, and the manhunt orchestrated by Det. Snydes (Nestor Carbonell). He organizes an entire operation around Tommy but accidentally discovers a less slippery catch in Robert. The resulting plot is an amusing and brisk, if shallow, game of cat-and-mouse that moves its more intriguingly critical ideas and its most potentially fascinating relationship to the sidelines.

By the end, Bandit also seems conflicted about how it sees its protagonist, who's alternately a tragic consequence of circumstance, a simple case study of the end result of crime, and a bit of a joke about how well a couple of simple, goofy ideas can pay. All of this might be the case of a movie that doesn't seem to know what it wants to say simply because it doesn't have much to communicate.

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