'Plastic,' a frothy heist film past its time
Identity theft and credit-card fraud never looked as exciting or sexy as in Plastic, a frothy little heist movie from Britain that starts off with great promise, only to devolve midway into an empty derivative shell of a film.
Identity theft and credit-card fraud never looked as exciting or sexy as in
Plastic
, a frothy little heist movie from Britain that starts off with great promise, only to devolve midway into an empty derivative shell of a film.
It's a step down for director Julian Gilbey, whose disturbing, critically acclaimed 2011 killer thriller, A Lonely Place to Die, was a magnificent sight to behold.
Ed Speleers (Eragon, Downton Abbey) is charming as Sam, leader of a gang of four college students who are amassing a small fortune as con artists and thieves.
An intelligent, quick-witted economics major with the air of a dreamy romantic poet, Sam seems to think becoming a crook is the only logical reaction to the global economic meltdown.
As his econ professor tells her class, the recession means that "a whole generation of educated and trained suppliers - that's you guys, by the way - may never work." (Cheerful thought.)
The boys' fun and games come to an ugly, screeching halt when they cross a sadistic crime lord named Marcel. Thomas Kretschmann exudes comic-book malice as the villain who threatens to kill the kids unless they pay him £2 million (about $3.3 million).
Moving at a steady, fast clip in its first act, the film begins to fall apart in the second, which takes the kids and their new recruit, femme fatale credit-card expert Frankie (Emma Rigby), to Miami Beach to con an exclusive jeweler out of $30 million in diamonds.
Instead of jazzing up the film with its hot beaches and hot women, the Miami scenes are tiresome, sexist, and boring. Rigby provides pleasurable scenery but does little acting, and her character's fledgling romance with Sam feels contrived.
By the time we come to the actual heist and the deadly chase that follows, we've pretty much lost interest in the fates of Sam and his buddies.
Plastic is a tiresome Johnny-come-lately that would have been more timely a decade ago, during the Ocean's Eleven heist-film trend.
Plastic *1/2 (out of four stars)
Directed by Julian Gilbey. With Ed Speleers, Emma Rigby, Thomas Kretschmann, Will Poulter, Alfie Allen, Sebastian De Souza. Distributed by ARC Entertainment.
Running time: 1 hour, 42 mins.
Parent's guide: R (strong violence, nudity, profanity, some drug use).
Playing at: AMC Neshaminy 24.
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