The oxymoron title, HONEST THIEF, should alert the discerning to the murky moronic morality mooted by this movie.
Liam Neeson is Tom, dubbed The In and Out robber. With an impressive nine million dollar haul, he has successfully plundered a host of financial institutions by blasting their vaults after hours and never having to traumatize tellers or customers. No shotties up the snotties for this gentleman safe cracker.
Apparently he has never spent a penny – literally, not metaphorically – of his purloined purse, the motive for his burglary being that the banks did his daddy wrong. Vengeance and vanity not avarice is his muddied motivation.
Switching custom is what most aggrieved by financial institutions do, but Neeson’s Tom, is all about blowing up things and enjoys getting more bucks for his bang, even though he stashes the cash rather than blowing it. He’s a gelignite junky with a pole for the vault, a romance that’s lucky to last a wick.
Then something unexpectedly explosive happens. Scouting for a secure storage space, he encounters Annie, the storage space manager, and boom goes his heart, falls head over heels with this smart, funny, gorgeous woman.
Inexplicably, he decides to to turn himself in, returning the coin, and bargaining for a short sentence so he can fuse with Annie.
Totally baffling why this master of the fuse wants to come clean in this confusing manner. He bangs on about the banks doing the dirty so why would he not suspect crooked cops to cross him, as they do, and frame him up for murder as well as robbery?
More like a kissing cousin to OLD MAN WITH A GUN than Neeson’s TAKEN trilogy, HONEST THIEF is stolen by Jeffrey Donovan’s portrayal of FBI agent, Meyers, a dogged detective and dog fancier.
Kate Walsh as Annie shows all the attributes that Tom is smitten by, but shows the same bad Berejicklian type judgment of cavorting with a bad boy boyfriend. Bashed and bruised physically, she unabashedly stands by her man.
Directed by Mark Williams and co written by Williams and Steve Allrich, HONEST THIEF is a workable but weak-tea thriller, milky tea where a jolt of bitter black coffee would be better served.