Army of Thieves, a heist full of charm available on Netflix

You may remember the movie Army of the Dead. Released last summer on Netflix, filmmaker Zack Snyder told how a group of mercenaries embarked on a suicide mission while Las Vegas was decimated by a zombie attack. The result was as gory as it was exuberant.

Snyder had fun crossing all genres: horror, obviously, the heist film, but more strangely, comedy. More than six months later, here is a prequel to this film which tells the story of Ludwig Dieter, the famous German piercer that we discover here six years before the events of Army of the Dead .

This somewhat shabby bank clerk is passionate about the operation of safes and makes YouTube tutorials to learn how to open them. He is one day contacted by a mysterious group who offers him to rob three mythical chests.

Winks to the classics

You would have understood it : Army of Thieves has nothing to do, neither in tone nor in spirit, with Army of the Dead. Not a hint of horror here: the film relegates the zombies to the background (they appear in the distance, on TV) to focus on the
broken. The work multiplies the nods to the classics of the genre (Ocean’s Eleven, Gold is baring…) In an energetic, joyful and undeniably cool staging.

But the undeniable charm of the project lies in its hero: Dieter is a character as endearing as he is awkward, perfectly embodied by Matthias Schweighöfer. Its mix of playfulness, cunning, and ingenuity is pretty much what the movie is all about.

An exercise in a clever style, which does not claim to reinvent the genre, but rather to fit into its well-established formulas to the delight of spectators. Mission accomplished !

Available on Netflix, 2 h 07.

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