Friday the 13th has always been a good day for a movie about bad decisions, and Amazon MGM Studios is leaning straight into it. How to Rob a Bank, the new action thriller from director David Leitch, opens wide in North American theaters today, and it arrives with one of the more modern hooks of the year: a crew of bank robbers who do not hide from the cameras but broadcast every job to an online audience.
A heist crew that treats robbery like content
Nicholas Hoult plays Ryan, the ringleader known to his followers as “The Wolf” because he fronts the crew’s videos in a furry wolf mask. His philosophy is summed up early in a line of voiceover: content is king, and an audience is more powerful than a gun. Around him is a tight Pittsburgh team. Anna Sawai is Emi, the strategist and getaway driver who specializes in diversions. Pete Davidson plays Vince, a combat veteran who came home to find the system less loyal to him than he was to it. Rhenzy Feliz is Hugo, the tech whiz who shapes the footage into viral clips.
The crew’s videos turn their robberies into a kind of tutorial and protest at the same time, and the money adds up to hundreds of millions. That viral fame is exactly what puts them on the radar of a veteran FBI agent, played by John C. Reilly, who teams up with an unlikely partner: Raegan, a deadpan software genius played by Zoë Kravitz. She is under house arrest for building a program that can locate people by combing through images posted online, and the agent offers to clear her charges if she points that tool at the Wolf and his friends. Christian Slater, Paul Sparks, Tati Gabrielle and Young Mazino round out the cast.
The Fall Guy team reunites
Leitch, whose credits include Deadpool 2, Bullet Train and The Fall Guy, brings back much of his regular crew here, including cinematographer Jonathan Sela, composer Dominic Lewis and editor Elísabet Ronaldsdóttir. Mark Bianculli wrote the screenplay, and Brian Grazer’s Imagine Entertainment produced alongside Leitch’s 87North. The film is rated R and runs just over two hours, which is long for a caper but gives the story room to slow down between set pieces.
The opening heist sets the tone: two minutes inside the bank, a decoy call to pull police attention elsewhere, and a fast escape on motorbikes, all framed as a video within the movie. That playful, fourth-wall-poking style runs through every job the crew pulls.
Critics can’t agree, and that might help
Early reviews are genuinely divided. Some critics find the influencer framing loud and overdesigned, a movie trying very hard to feel current. Others argue that once the film takes a breath and lets the characters talk, it becomes surprisingly emotional, an underdog fairy tale with real heart from a strong ensemble. On review aggregators the film has been tracking well with critics overall, which suggests the fans outnumber the skeptics.
What almost everyone agrees on is that the premise lands at an interesting moment. A mainstream studio movie in which audiences are invited to root for the thieves, and where the robbers frame themselves as Robin Hoods fighting a rigged system, is not something Hollywood makes every year. Whether that reads as clever satire or glossy wish fulfillment will depend on who is in the seat.
A crowded weekend
How to Rob a Bank is not alone. It shares the weekend with Paramount’s Ebenezer, a darker take on A Christmas Carol, and Bleecker Street’s Gothic thriller Victorian Psycho, while a pile of limited releases fills the art-house screens. With The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping arriving next Friday, this is the heist crew’s best window to grab an audience before the holiday blockbusters move in.
If you liked the breezy energy of The Fall Guy and do not mind a movie that talks back to its own camera, this is the Friday night pick. Just maybe leave the wolf mask at home.