‘Honest Thief’ review; Dir. Mark Williams (2020)

At a time when big budget blockbusters aren’t releasing onto the big screen, a movie like this latest Liam Neeson-starring action thriller seem like quite the novelty. Despite its initial paint-by-numbers feel, there’s a lot to enjoy in Ozark co-creator Mark Williams’ second feature, Honest Thief.

Neeson leads the cast as the ‘honest thief’ of the title; Tom, a sixty-something ex-Marine (of course) who in later life turned his hand to robbing banks – not holding them up with force or weapons, but by using his particular set of skills to steal bags of cash when the banks were closed – a technique that earned him the title ‘the In and Out Bandit’, much to his annoyance. However, when Tom finds love in the form of storage unit manager Annie (Kate Walsh), he decides to turn in all of his loot in the name of love and attempt to score a deal with the FBI – a hopeful reduced sentence in a prison close to his new flame. His plan to broker such a lucrative agreement with the feds hits a bump in the road when two young agents, Nivens (Jai Courtney) and Hall (Anthony Ramos), discover that he isn’t another imposter that they first expect him to be, and that he does have bundles of cash hidden away in storage. Smelling an opportunity to escape to a better life, the two agents turn on Tom and their employers by moving the cash to a local safe house with the intent to ‘deal’ with Tom and run off with the money.

What follows is 90-ish minutes of a playful cat and mouse actioner with Neeson back in action mode following some very different roles in the likes of Ordinary Love, Widows and, more recently, Made In Italy. His return to the genre where he has proved most popular, in terms of box-office receipts anyway, sees the actor seemingly comfortable in his surroundings, easily slipping into the ageing character with a hidden past once again.

The story is wafer thin, but the action is mostly well-staged and easy to watch. Despite some hammy acting from some parties, and some plot beats that can be seen a mile off, Honest Thief is one of those movies that can easily be loaded into a DVD player late on a Friday night with a couple of cold ones, and completely enjoyed – so it’s a little ironic that it is possibly one of the biggest opportunities to see a film of this kind in cinemas since Tenet.

We are, of course, in no way comparing this to Christopher Nolan’s massive behemoth, but here, Williams delivers a reasonable film that is as far removed from the celebrated and very slow-burning Ozark – one of the best TV shows out there at the moment – as possible – but I guess that could be the point. The director, who co-wrote the piece with Steve Allrich, has clearly set out to bring a fast-paced, exciting action film that hardly lets up to the screen, and he does largely succeed.

So long as you kick things into cruise control and leave your brain at home, you’ll get something from this decent actioner. Just don’t expect the experience to be a memorable one. A film that may be more suited to the small screen and the more forgiving home audience it might be, but for an excuse to see a loud and proud thriller on the big screen, you could do far worse.

Honest Thief is released in cinemas on 23rd October 2020.