3 out of 5

Director: Jonathan Sobol

As ‘Art of the Steal’ starts off – jazzy music, over-stylized, detailed planning for an art heist, thieves in suits – we know we’re watching an Ocean’s 11 riff.  Made in Canada.  But there’s Kurt Russell, so that’s fine, we’re watching an Ocean’s 11 with Kurt Russell, made in Canada.  And then Matt Dillon gets caught, turns rat on Kurt, as we flash forward to Kurt’s post-jail days.  Okay, so we’re watching an Ocean’s 11 riff revenge flick, starring Kurt Russell, made in Canada.  But it’s not a revenge flick, it seems, it’s ‘one last heist’, and Russell – as “Crunch” Calhoun is played as something of a dunderhead, his repartee and planning never quite on par with those around him.  He’s recruited Francie as his ‘apprentice,’ and as played by Jay Baruchel he sports a horribly forced slacker accent and it forever seems like they’ve chosen the least funny of his improv jokes for the final cut, so dunderhead #2.

So we’re back to Ocean’s 11, but with a plan that seems fairly mundane for all of Sobol’s directorial flashiness and characters that aren’t as interesting as the slick vibe seems to want them to be.  And all of the accents seemed fake.  Not saying that they were, but that they sounded fake seemed to go hand-in-hand with the quality of the movie – a step removed from what it wants to be.  But I kept watching.  And you should too.  I quip on the flashiness, but Sobol only really goes Soderbergh with the location transitions, otherwise finding a fairly reliable framing and pleasantly cool (temperature-wise) color palette in which to stage his scenes.  And there are moments where Kurt Russell pauses just so, and he becomes more human and less dunderhead and you do want him to win, which is the required buy-in for any underdog tale.  Thankfully, ‘Art of the Steal’ does open up into something more – a dash of darkness, some expected but well played deceit, and a final sequence that isn’t exactly unpredictable but makes you feel rewarded for what you’ve watched, and retroactively jolts a sense of fun into it.  A movie’s conclusion should never be the absolute selling factor, but ‘Art of the Steal’ ends up being a valid entry in Russell’s B-Movie stable – once you understand what you’re in for, it makes it a lot more enjoyable and, I imagine, easily rewatchable.