BEFORE: See, I told you we'd get to the other film by Zack Snyder, which is a prequel to "Army of the Dead". Again, I realize I'm watching the film first and the prequel second, but this is the same order the films were released in, and I have to respect that. Everybody at the time (2021) who doesn't have to wait for films to link into some giant chain probably watched them in this same order, with "Army of the Dead" going first. Whether this is the right move or not, I can't possibly tell, but I have to watch the films in the order that preserves the unbroken chain.
Dave Bautista carries over one more time from "Knock at the Cabin". It's only archive footage - a clip from "Army of the Dead" is apparently tacked on at the end of this one, but that's enough for my purposes. As long as Bautista's listed in the IMDB, which he is, or if he's not, then I can verify he's there with my own eyes, I can count this as a valid link, by my own rules.
THE PLOT: A prequel, set before the events of "Army of the Dead", which focuses on German safecracker Ludwig Dieter and a group of aspiring thieves on a top secret heist during the early stages of the zombie apocalypse.
AFTER: This is two hours of movie that explains a 5-minute sequence from "Army of the Dead" that probably nobody even cared about, when Scott Ward and Maria Cruz walk into the locksmith store and find their safe expert, who somehow knows how to crack the mystery safe in the casino. They had no idea they were accidentally bringing him the schematics for the FOURTH safe that followed the three he'd already cracked, and also he had no idea that the safe was in Vegas, which is coincidentally where he ends up at the end of "Army of Thieves". In other words, events conspired to draw him to right where he needed to be so he could go on the mission, because we're all the sums of our experiences and our travels, and wherever you go, there you are, or something like that.
I mean, there's divine providence, and then there are unbelievable coincidences, but the actor who played this master safe cracker, Ludwig Dieter, directed this prequel, and really, who would know more about this guy than the actor who played him? How the hell did a German safe-cracker end up working at a Vegas locksmith, anyway? And what are the odds that he'd been working for five or six years just a few miles from the safe that he trained for YEARS to crack, and not even know it? It's mind-boggling, sure, but it's what we're being asked to believe here, despite the incredible odds against it. But here at the Movie Year we know there are no coincidences, only happy accidents, as I've seen my fair share. What are the odds that I'd encounter Muppeteer Frank Oz on 40th St., after he gave a lecture at a theater bookshop, and at the same time, I'd have an autographed photo of him in transit to my house, having bought it just a week before?
It cuts both ways, though, terrible coincidences also bring bad luck, like what are the odds that I'd have a contact at Lucasfilm who owed me a favor, and I would travel up to Marin County one year after San Diego Comic-Con, because I had an open invitation to visit Skywalker Ranch at my convenience, and get there to find out that the whole ranch was shut down in preparation of Lucas' announcement that he was retiring and selling Lucasfilm to Disney? I mean, if he'd called me I could have politely asked him to delay his announcement by a few days so I could get that tour in, but I guess it turns out that he and I weren't as close as I thought, and he's just a billionaire who was only thinking of HIMSELF at the time, and not me. Still love ya, George, but you did me wrong back in 2012.
And if you think about it, it turned out to be bad luck for Ludwig Dieter in the end, I mean here come two mercenaries into his locksmith job one day, and they offer him $250,000 for one day's work cracking a safe, and come on, it's his DREAM job, but one that turned out to be a nightmare. Here he was, willing to risk a stroll through the zombie quarantine zone JUST to crack the world's most difficult safe, the legendary Götterdammerung, and well, maybe that trip didn't turn out in his favor, but I've said too much.
But we have to back through the mists of time, back to when the zombie outbreak in Las Vegas was just starting, and the people of Europe were not quite sure whether to believe the news reports from the U.S. or not. Really, with the world's attention on Las Vegas and/or the end of the world as we know it, there couldn't be a better time to rob a few banks, well that's the theory, anyway. Bank teller Sebastian Schlenct-Wohnert spends his nights making YouTube videos about safecracking, and also practicing on getting tumblers to fall by sound and touch in just seconds flat. His posted videos don't get many hits, but one comment on his latest video invites him to a secret safe-cracking competition in Berlin, and he's intrigued. He wins the contest, despite getting a late start because he's anxious, nervous and really confused about what's going on.
But winning gets him recruited for a heist crew, provided he's willing to give up his bank teller job and do whatever's necessary to become very, very rich. There's a hacker, a planner, a getaway driver and a gunman, like, come on, according to movies that's all you need, right? And nobody knows more about these three safes, made by legendary locksmith Hans Wagner, who after completing his four masterpieces and losing his wife and son in an accident, created only one final safe, which he locked himself in as a suicide method.
The four safes are named after the operas in Wagner's Ring Cycle - there's Die Valkure, Das Rheingold, Siegfried and Götterdammerung, and the gang only knows where the first three are, nobody knows where the fourth one is, except for anyone who saw "Army of the Dead". The safes increase in difficulty, so the gang starts with the first one, which is in a Paris credit union, and I think if they didn't want to rob them in this order, Sebastian probably would have demanded that they do, you know, because he's German and probably has OCD like most Germans do.
Sebastian is able to crack the first safe, Die Valkure, but he insists on listening to the appropriate Wagner opera whlie doing so. Umm, that's great, but I have to call a NITPICK POINT, because wouldn't the loud opera prevent him from properly hearing the tumblers as he's cracking the safe? I mean, does he work by hearing or touch, or both? How does the opera not get in the way? Anyway he and the crew take some money from the safe, but not all of it, because the other three safes have much more money in them, and they've proven that Sebastian can open them, so they head for the second safe in Prague, and this time the crew provides a distraction by robbing the bank the old-fashioned way, with guns and masks, while Sebastian and planner Gwendoline are in the back vault, cracking it open. Brad gets shot in the shoulder during the escape, and he deliberately leaves Sebastian behind, forcing him to avoid Interpol on his own.
The third safe is in a casino in St. Moritz, and by this time the heist crew has fractured, because of Brad's betrayal of Sebastian. Now three members of the crew move forward with the plan to steal the entire safe before Interpol arrives to move it, and the other two members of the team (gunman and driver) are lying in wait to steal it from THEM after Sebastian opens it. Now Sebastian has to crack the most difficult safe of his career so far while it's on a moving truck, headed toward an inland lake where they'll escape with the money by boat. But first they'll have to face off against both the former members of their crew, and also the police.
NITPICK POINT: The logic kind of breaks down here when Sebastian/Ludwig finds the passport in his new name, along with plane tickets to Las Vegas, because that's where Gwendoline wanted to go. Sure, I get that he's going to fly there and kind of wait for her, but that area is kind of infected by zombies at the moment, which the movie keeps reminding us about. So, why go there, if it's not safe? Also, considering the nature of the apocalyptic outbreak there, don't you figure that there might be travel restrictions in place? I remember from going to Vegas in 2019 that the airport there isn't very far from the Strip at all.
And so it ends where it needs to end, in order for the other film to begin where it begins. Bear in mind that while "Army of the Dead" was a heist film situated in the middle of a zombie film, "Army of Thieves" is more of a far-off zombie threat stuck in the middle of a giant heist film. Neither film is really 50-50, so as a result they're kind of two different animals.
Here I was, intrigued by those skeletons that the crew found in the Vegas vault, ones that kind of were dressed like them, and I figured that with "Army of Thieves" maybe we'd get the story about the previous crew that tried to break into the Götterdammerung safe, and why they failed. One character even suggested that the 2nd crew WAS also the skeletons, that they were stuck in a time-loop and being forced to commit the same heist, over and over again, until they found a way to succeed. Yeah, it's an interesting concept, but it didn't work out. Now, in the scene where Sebastian competes in that safe-cracking competition, there was a doorman/bouncer who was nearly as big as Dave Bautista, so I thought maybe he'd be on the team, and then they would fail at the Vegas heist, and there would be the right number of skeletons to explain that scene in "Army of the Dead", but no, the prequel went in an entirely different direction, just to kind of end up in the same place, more or less.
But is this a BETTER heist film than its sequel was a zombie film? Well, geez, I don't know, that's like comparing apples and zombies - one's a heist film and the other's a zombie film at the end of the day. OK, maybe this is a slightly better film overall, if I can be allowed to compare the two. But it doesn't have any Richard Cheese music in it, that's a solid point against it.
Also starring Matthias Schweighofer (last seen in "Army of the Dead"), Nathalie Emmanuel (last seen in "Die Hart"), Ruby O. Fee, Stuart Martin (last seen in "Rebel Moon - Part Two: The Scargiver"), Guz Khan (last seen in "The Bubble"), Jonathan Cohen, Noemie Nakai, Christian Steyer, Dan Bradford (last seen in "Unlocked"), Tonya Graves (last seen in "The Omen" (2006)), Trent Garrett, Barbara Meier, Trish Osmond, Pavel Gajdos, Hana Frejkova (last seen in "Child 44"), Jan Nemejovsky (ditto), Peter Hosking (last seen in "The Catcher Was a Spy"), Rebecca Connolly, Frank Kusche, Ian Willoughby, Andreas Nowak, Duy Anh Tran, Michael Pitthan, Miloslav Pechacek, Zdenek Pechacek (last seen in "Lord of War"), Josef Jelinek, Tigran Hovakimyan, Fanette Ronjat, Dunja Hayali, Daniel Vano, Ondrej Blascak, John Bubniak, Amy Huck (also last seen in "The Omen" (2006)), Ted Otis, Bob Boudreaux, Leonard Treyde, Jasmina Peña Milian, Nandi Sawyers-Hudson, Violina Maria Rostami, David Dvorscik,
with archive footage of Ana de la Reguera (also last seen in "Army of the Dead"), Peter Simonischek and Nicolas Cage (last seen in "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life")
RATING: 6 out of 10 banana nut muffins
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