It seems like forever since I saw Kurt Russell in something. I almost thought he was retired. Then I saw this at my local theater and realized Kurt is still rocking the old Snake Plissken hair style. That's OK, caused it works for him, and despite sporting the hair do for more than thirty years, it makes him look young and vibrate. As the title suggest, Kurt plays an experience thief. More precise he's Crunch Calhoun, a wheel man in a crew that also has his half-brother, Nicky Calhoun played by Matt Dillon as a member and Idea man. On their last Heist, Nicky gets caught and rats on his brother to stay out of Jail.After serving his time, Crunch becomes a struggling daredevil who gets pulled back into the game by his no good brother, who stumbles upon the ultimate Art Heist. That's how the title of the film doubles its cleverness, their a crew of experience art thieves, but that's where the cleverness really stops. I don't know if it's because everyone played their roles so dead on or because everyone was phoning in their performances for a pay check, but the film is way too predictable. The film follows the heist formula to the letter, and attempts to throw you off the scent, particularly with Jay Baruchel's character Francie, a thief who befriends Crunch at a time when the man was living on the up and up, and Katheryn Winnick who plays Crunch's girlfriend, Lola whose character's agenda could have kept me on the edge of my seat caused of a semi-love Triangle she created between Crunch and Nicky, but her character would have needed to be more developed to accomplish that. With the exception of Lola, The movie stands mostly on how interesting the actors made the characters they played. Watching them interact with each other was the best part. Like with veteran actor, Terrance Stamp playing a paroled ex-art thief force to work with a bumbling Interpol agent assigned to catch the crew doing something wrong in order to win his freedom. It is worth taking a gander at just to see Russell (and his hair), pal around with some interesting characters played by some decent actors, but it's nothing to go out of your way to see.
Review of The Art of the Steal
