The Vault
The best thing about the film is that it knows exactly what product it wants to be: a heist entertainment, with a varied team, an impossible plan, a vault, a ticking clock and an entire city looking the other way because of the World Cup final. That mixture of the Bank of Spain, football, the noise of the street and a carefully measured robbery had plenty of potential. And for quite a few moments, it works as promised: a fast, polished, professional and easy-to-watch film.
I do not think it is a disaster at all. Jaume Balagueró shows craft and knows how to give weight to a story that, in other hands, could have looked much cheaper. The production looks good, the staging is solid and the use of Madrid and the area around the bank gives the whole thing a certain personality. You can feel the intention to make a Spanish film with international ambition, one that wants to play in the league of big cinematic robberies, with rhythm, technology, suspense and a recognizable cast. In that sense, the ambition is welcome.
The problem is that the formula is also too visible. Everything is where it should be: the young genius, the elegant thief, the grumpy expert, the resourceful man, the institutional villain, the skill tests, the impossible obstacles and the measured twists. But few things truly surprise. The film moves professionally, yes, but almost always along familiar paths. It is one of those heists you watch pleasantly while it lasts and, once it ends, it begins to evaporate almost immediately.
Freddie Highmore works well as the unexpected brain behind the plan. He has that face of a brilliant, polite and slightly out-of-place boy that fits the idea of someone able to solve problems others cannot even formulate. Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey brings mystery and elegance, although her character could have more force of her own. Liam Cunningham brings craft and presence. José Coronado and Luis Tosar lift any scene just by appearing, because they have weight, voice and an authority the film needs. The cast helps a lot to keep the mechanism from feeling too empty.
What convinced me least was that the characters are designed more as pieces of the plan than as people. We know just enough about them for each to perform a function, but not enough for them to matter very much. In a heist film that can be acceptable if the machinery is truly brilliant, if each trick amazes or if the tension grows enough to make you forget the lack of depth. Here the machinery is correct, even entertaining, but not ingenious enough to fully cover that feeling of a calculated product.
The World Cup element may be the most charming part. Using the 2010 final, the crowd in the streets and the moment of national euphoria as a smokescreen gives the film a very Spanish spark, even though at times it seems determined not to look too Spanish. I find that contradiction curious. It wants to be international, to speak several languages, to resemble the Anglo-Saxon models of the genre, but what most distinguishes it is precisely the local material: the bank, the square, the final, the celebration, the memory of the goal, that city focused on a collective emotion.
It must also be said that it entertains. It has rhythm, it does not sink, it maintains a certain tension and it doses the phases of the plan well. The scenes inside the bank have enough tension, and the mystery of the vault adds an attractive challenge. There is no need to ask this kind of cinema for moral depth or absolute realism. You accept many cheats if the film plays boldly and knows how to have fun. The problem is that here, although the entertainment is there, it lacks some spark, personality and true pleasure in deception.
I would have liked it to be more playful, more nervous, more surprising. For the tricks to have more imagination, for the humor to breathe better, for the characters to get a little dirtier. Everything is so polished that at times it feels more like a model of a heist than a heist with life. It does not annoy, it does not bore too much, it does not collapse, but it also does not leave the feeling of having seen an irresistible machine. It follows the rules of the genre with great correctness and few risks, and there lie both its virtue and its limit.
In the end, it remains for me an acceptable entertainment, even a pleasant one, but not especially memorable. It looks good, has resources, has actors, has a strong visual idea and uses the World Cup context with charm. But it is also quite conventional, somewhat hollow and too dependent on formulas we have seen many times before. A correct, professional heist film, more likeable than exciting. It works for passing a good time, but it leaves no mark. As a robbery, it is well executed. As a film, it lacks soul.
I do not think it is a disaster at all. Jaume Balagueró shows craft and knows how to give weight to a story that, in other hands, could have looked much cheaper. The production looks good, the staging is solid and the use of Madrid and the area around the bank gives the whole thing a certain personality. You can feel the intention to make a Spanish film with international ambition, one that wants to play in the league of big cinematic robberies, with rhythm, technology, suspense and a recognizable cast. In that sense, the ambition is welcome.
The problem is that the formula is also too visible. Everything is where it should be: the young genius, the elegant thief, the grumpy expert, the resourceful man, the institutional villain, the skill tests, the impossible obstacles and the measured twists. But few things truly surprise. The film moves professionally, yes, but almost always along familiar paths. It is one of those heists you watch pleasantly while it lasts and, once it ends, it begins to evaporate almost immediately.
Freddie Highmore works well as the unexpected brain behind the plan. He has that face of a brilliant, polite and slightly out-of-place boy that fits the idea of someone able to solve problems others cannot even formulate. Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey brings mystery and elegance, although her character could have more force of her own. Liam Cunningham brings craft and presence. José Coronado and Luis Tosar lift any scene just by appearing, because they have weight, voice and an authority the film needs. The cast helps a lot to keep the mechanism from feeling too empty.
What convinced me least was that the characters are designed more as pieces of the plan than as people. We know just enough about them for each to perform a function, but not enough for them to matter very much. In a heist film that can be acceptable if the machinery is truly brilliant, if each trick amazes or if the tension grows enough to make you forget the lack of depth. Here the machinery is correct, even entertaining, but not ingenious enough to fully cover that feeling of a calculated product.
The World Cup element may be the most charming part. Using the 2010 final, the crowd in the streets and the moment of national euphoria as a smokescreen gives the film a very Spanish spark, even though at times it seems determined not to look too Spanish. I find that contradiction curious. It wants to be international, to speak several languages, to resemble the Anglo-Saxon models of the genre, but what most distinguishes it is precisely the local material: the bank, the square, the final, the celebration, the memory of the goal, that city focused on a collective emotion.
It must also be said that it entertains. It has rhythm, it does not sink, it maintains a certain tension and it doses the phases of the plan well. The scenes inside the bank have enough tension, and the mystery of the vault adds an attractive challenge. There is no need to ask this kind of cinema for moral depth or absolute realism. You accept many cheats if the film plays boldly and knows how to have fun. The problem is that here, although the entertainment is there, it lacks some spark, personality and true pleasure in deception.
I would have liked it to be more playful, more nervous, more surprising. For the tricks to have more imagination, for the humor to breathe better, for the characters to get a little dirtier. Everything is so polished that at times it feels more like a model of a heist than a heist with life. It does not annoy, it does not bore too much, it does not collapse, but it also does not leave the feeling of having seen an irresistible machine. It follows the rules of the genre with great correctness and few risks, and there lie both its virtue and its limit.
In the end, it remains for me an acceptable entertainment, even a pleasant one, but not especially memorable. It looks good, has resources, has actors, has a strong visual idea and uses the World Cup context with charm. But it is also quite conventional, somewhat hollow and too dependent on formulas we have seen many times before. A correct, professional heist film, more likeable than exciting. It works for passing a good time, but it leaves no mark. As a robbery, it is well executed. As a film, it lacks soul.
Mini Review: The best thing about the film is that it knows exactly what product it wants to be: a heist entertainment, with a varied team, an impossible plan, a vault, a ticking clock and an entire city looking the other way because of the World Cup final. That mixture of the Bank of Spain, football, the noise of the street and a carefully measured robbery had plenty of potential. And for quite a few moments, it works as promised: a fast, polished,...
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