3 unemployed men with bleak futures decide to try a robbery to turn
their lives around.
The film is beautifully photographed, and has a gritty sense of realism
and dark sense of humor, along with a deliberate pace some may find
off-putting.
This isn't a heist film about action, but rather about hopelessness,
poverty, and moral choices. It isn't afraid to let us feel ambiguity at
what the men are doing, at the same time creating characters that can't
help but elicit our sympathy, and make us wonder, "at what point does
society create its own criminals"?
There are some weak spots - the men are almost too perfect a cross
section of the down-and out; the young man whose schooling and hard
work have left him nowhere, the unwanted man in a wheelchair and the
middle aged man phased out for someone younger. I'm not quite sure I
buy them as friends in the first place, but once I accepted that slight
contrivance, the film worked well on all it's levels; character study,
political tract and crime thriller.
It reminded me of something Sidney Lumet might have made in the 1970s.
For my taste, that's a good thing.
