Many prequels seek to cash in on the popularity of a huge, breakout character in a major hit, so it’s pleasing to see one that takes a fun, minor character from an OK film on an entirely new adventure through an entirely different genre, just for laughs. It’s even better when the result is something that might be more fun than its progenitor, and which adds depth to a character who didn’t have much initially.
Matthias Schweighöfer, who played the safecracker known as Ludwig Dieter in Zach Snyder’s Army Of The Dead, is here introduced a few years before as Sebastian Schlencht-Wöhnert, a mild-mannered clerk working in a small German bank branch. On the side, he posts YouTube videos about safecracking that literally no one watches – until one day a lone viewer invites him to a mysterious event in Berlin, wherein he has to race other safecrackers to solve a series of challenges. Having thus proved himself, Sebastian is recruited by Nathalie Emmanuel’s Gwendoline to tackle the four near-mythical safes created by a 19th century genius on a madcap heist across Europe.
Just a few problems: Gwendoline’s crew are not entirely reliable, especially Brad Cage (Stuart Martin), a sort of malignant himbo Hugh Jackman lookalike with a taste in ridiculous action-hero names. And Interpol are soon after the gang, led by Jonathan Cohen’s obsessed Delacroix. Cue crosses and double-crosses, car and bike chases through cobbled streets and a serious hit to the insurance premiums of chichi European banks.
It’s a little reliant on nice scenery and CG safe-innards at times, but in general the genial cluelessness of Schweighöfer’s Sebastian, and his growing sense of competence, is what keeps you watching. He has a nice, tentative flirtation with Gwendoline’s poor little rich girl thief to keep us going between the heists, and just enough climbing tension to power the plot to some kind of conclusion. There may not be much question that Sebastian will survive, but Schweighöfer puts the fate of the rest of his crew in real doubt at times, and gives this heist movie a real sense of life and vigour that plays nicely against Army Of The Dead’s undead hordes.
