The dry, drab and disappointing would-be crime thriller “Heist 88” is a prime example of a movie that has all the right ingredients on the table but fails to create an appetizing entrée at nearly every turn. It’s a film that initially intrigues but quickly loses its way — and ends so abruptly it almost feels like everyone lost interest and decided it was time to go home.
As reported earlier in a Sun-Times article more entertaining than the movie, “Heist 88” is loosely based on the true story of Armand Moore and the audacious but failed bank heist he masterminded in Chicago in 1988, when he tried to wire tens of millions of dollars from First National Bank of Chicago to phony overseas accounts. That’s some juicy source material, and with the great Courtney B. Vance in the lead role and a terrific supporting cast of familiar veterans and promising young talents joining him for the film shoot in Chicago, there was ample reason for optimism.
Alas, that sunny outlook soon grows cloudy as “Heist 88” goes about its business in clunky, strained fashion, all the while looking like a made-for-TV movie from 20 years ago.
The opening title cards tell us, “In 1988, the U.S. banking system had yet to become fully computerized. Every day, corporations transferred millions of dollars using only a simple confirmation code. This code would then be used to confirm the transfer by a second bank employee, via a phone call.” Cut to Courtney B. Vance as a well-dressed man we will soon learn is one Jeremy Horne, the name given to the character loosely based on Armand Moore, as he enters a posh Chicago bank and initiates an international wire transaction of some $80 million. Cue the obligatory “3 WEEKS EARLIER” graphic, the standard-issue shots of the skyline and the L, and off we go.
Jeremy has arrived in Chicago wearing a tailored suit and a dapper hat — and an ankle monitor. As we glean from phone messages and newspaper headlines, Jeremy has pleaded guilty to some serious crimes and is due to surrender to Wayne County, Michigan, authorities in 21 days. After reuniting with his estranged nephew, Marshall (Bentley Green), an aspiring house music producer, at a memorial service, Jeremy takes Marshall to Lou Mitchell’s and learns that Marshall is $10,000 in debt to some loan sharks and could really use his unc’s help.
Enter, and I mean literally enter, Marshall’s three best friends: Danny (Xavier Clyde), LaDonna (Precious Way) and Rick (Nican Robinson), all of whom work at the First National Bank of Chicago, in low-paying, going-nowhere jobs, despite their experience and qualifications. Like Marshall, these three are in dire financial and in some cases personal straits — and Jeremy exploits their respective situations by using his considerable skills of persuasion to convince them they only way they’ll ever get ahead and make it in this rigged world is to accept a “business opportunity,” as Jeremy puts it.
That business opportunity? They’re going to throw their lives away to help Jeremy con their employer out of tens of millions of dollars through an elaborate scheme that sounds a little bit like an update on the ruse pulled in “The Sting.” In just a few weeks, the bank will switch over to a computerized system, but in the meantime, there’s a window to exploit the relatively basic security stanchions and execute a series of wire transactions that will net each of them millions. And it’s all morally justified because, well, the system. (“A bank’s loss is my gain,” reasons Jeremy.)
The money will be transferred to accounts in Geneva and they’ll all be in Switzerland before the bank and the authorities know what hit them. That’s the plan, anyway, with Keith David’s Buddha and Keesha Sharp’s Bree, a couple of old running mates of Jeremy’s, joining the crew to add some classy spice to the con/swindle/robbery.
With the occasional use of split screens, scenes set in locales such as the aforementioned Lou Mitchell’s as well as Miller’s Pub and the Drake Hotel, and solid production design work, “Heist 88” approximates the late 1980s locale and setting (hey, phone kiosks and pagers and landlines!), but the visuals are serviceable at best, the editing feels choppy, and the dialogue is often heavy-handed.
It seems odd that Jeremy’s parole supervisors can’t seem to track him down, what with the ankle monitor and all, and he’s free to set up camp in a lavish hotel suite and spend thousands of dollars in the 21 days before he is to turn himself in. We won’t spoil the ending, but after the admittedly entertaining and well-executed heist sequence, the film ends with a series of scenes that feel arbitrary and contrived, and an absolute groaner of a final line of dialogue completes the underwhelming vibe of the entire film.
