This movie is a great back-and-forth thriller, full of backstabs and turnarounds to keep the audience guessing. It has excellent production value, as is at this point expected of Steven Soderbergh, and the acting and script do not disappoint.
Closest comparison: It’s like Jackie Brown mixed with Mad Men and Uncut Gems.
Setting: Gangster
Plot: Crime
Tone: Thriller
The most fascinating part of this movie is its predictive qualities, weaving its narrative like CNN coverage of 2020, albeit nine years before it happened. The direction is dry but the acting, cinematography, and editing more than make up for it. The story is grounded and human, taking the good with the bad in a docudrama style that works well for the subject matter. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really go anywhere and can’t manage to pull the threads together in the end.
Content warning: mild gore
Closest comparison: It’s like Munich by way of Babel.
Setting: Spy Thriller
Plot: Disaster
Tone: DocuDrama
This movie is too long. It’s well executed on a technical level, of course, fine acting and cinematography etc., but it has more corporate jockeying than actual racing and the conflict is too straightforward to bear that out. There are lots of gratuitous shots of racecars and it ends up doing for cars what Top Gun did for fighter jets. Some of the humor is mean-spirited Schadenfreude, with a few short scenes are completely shoehorned in and not only break the flow of the movie but are strange diversions for the characters. On the whole it manages to hold audience attention as a perfectly serviceable historical drama about racecar drivers.
Closest comparison: It’s like Top Gun by way of Hidden Figures.
Setting: Racing Drama
Plot: Sports Drama
Tone: Corporate Drama
This is a classic and for good reason. It’s one of the most fun heist films out there and it keeps the action snappy by pairing it with an incredible soundtrack. And it boasts some classic lines like “gaudy monstrosity” that rank right up there with other all-time greats like “you were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off”. That being said, it has its flaws. Julia Robert’s character arc is rushed and even thought the heist itself is witty there are aspects that don’t make sense upon close inspection. None of that is enough to keep this from being one of the most fun heist movies ever put to film.
Closest comparison: It’s the casino heist movie by which all others are measured.
Setting: Heist
Plot: Heist
Tone: Comedy
Hahaha! Ok, so, it's not that the movie is that 'good' that it's a 4/5, but it's so much fun that I will definitely be seeing it again, probably more than once. This is a great '90s adventure movie. It knows what it is, and it does that very very well. It also doesn't do anything above that. It feels a lot like The Mummy (1999), without all the horror bits.
