Mark Reviews Movies: RIGHTEOUS THIEVES

Righteous Thieves, Lionsgate

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 9, 2023

There's probably not much new that could be done with the formula of a heist movie, so Righteous Thieves pretty much runs out of steam as soon as it's finished establishing the reason for its central robbery. It's not a particularly original idea, either, but at least it gives the movie an air of importance.

Michael Corcoran's screenplay never earns that sense of significance, of course. The plot has a team of thieves attempting to retrieve a quartet of paintings that had been stolen by the Nazis from a Jewish family during that reign of terror and genocide. With the end of the war, such works of art, as well as other treasures, are in the hands of people who share the Nazis' nefarious ideology, and a group of elders have made it their mission to rescue the art from neo-Nazis, returning them to their rightful owners or placing them in museums and galleries for the entire world to see.

Whether or not one sees this setup as exploitative will come down to how sincere one perceives the movie's intentions. Initially, the whole thing feels genuine, as Annabel (Lisa Vidal), who befriended a Holocaust survivor almost 40 years prior to the story proper while trying to steal money from his apartment, serves as the CEO of an organization that oversees the recovery of items stolen from Jews by the Nazis. She's genuine, to be sure, and so, too, is the mission at hand. That's it, though.

After Annabel decides to retrieve the four paintings stolen from the family of her now-late friend, the rest of the plot only reminds us of the nobility of the task at hand whenever the team needs a pep talk to get over some contrived obstacle in the way of their goal. It's difficult to see the premise as anything more than an excuse for some predictable heist shenanigans in that light.

As for the rest of the team, it's made up of Annabel's right-hand man Eddie (Carlos Miranda), his ex-girlfriend and master hacker Lucille (Jaina Le Ortiz), and expert locksmith Nadia (Sasha Merci). A mildly clever bit features what seems to be the introduction of a potential fifth member to the group, as a young man shows off some parkour skills while on the run after stealing from a pawn shop, only to reveal that Annabel is more interested in the guy who can catch said thief (with a the help of some time-and-space-bending editing). He's Bruno (Cam Gigandet), the generic wild card who's only in it for himself.

All of these characters are mostly generic types, because they're simply here to plan the robbery and execute it with relative ease (The barriers and snags in the plan are overcome without much trouble). Oh, they also have to look good while doing so (Somehow, each and every one of these people, from various backgrounds and with specialties in unique, is attractive in a way that feels impossible considering the odds of such a thing).

The target is Otto (Brian Cousins), a neo-Nazi currently in possession of the four paintings and assorted other stolen goods. He gets ahead of Annabel, on account of her previous rescue missions, but also goes around bragging about his possessions and where they're located—even to people, in the movie's most contrived scene, whom he deems to be inferior due to their ethnicity. He's not much of a threat, and neither are his guards at the private gallery where he keeps his plunder within a not-so-secure vault.

It takes a while for the heist to start, what with all the preparation and bantering/bickering between the broad characters and the occasional reminder that all of this in service of a good cause. The heist itself, as staged by director Anthony Nardolillo, makes some logistical sense, but whatever logic might exist in the scheme is undermined by how anticlimactic every step of the plan turns out to be.

The guards are kept to a minimum because of the usual trick of looping security footage. The security that does exist is taken out with ease or fought while obscured in the background. The vault door only needs a magnet to be opened, and a sequence of post-heist double-crossing and sequel-teasing feels like an afterthought, because such matters are almost requirements of the genre.

Righteous Thieves does nothing new or unique, except in giving us a basic premise with some political sincerity that's quickly dismissed. As for the typical stuff the movie does, it doesn't do those things well, either.

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