Army of Thieves – Film Review

A prequel, set before the events of Zack Snyder‘s Army of the Dead, which focuses on German safecracker Ludwig Dieter (Matthias Schweighöfer) leading a group of aspiring thieves on a top-secret heist during the early stages of the zombie apocalypse.

One of the biggest smash-hit releases on Netflix earlier this year was undoubtedly Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead, a sprawling zombie action film set in and around a completely zombie-infested Las Vegas and followed a group of people conducting a risky heist all while running and trying to survive from hordes of the undead. Although it’s not the best Snyder film ever made (that would, in my opinion, be his version of Justice League), I still found it to be an incredible movie packed with tons of action, heartfelt story beats, and memorable characters.

And one of the best characters in that film was definitely Matthias Schweighöfer’s Ludwig Dieter, a skilled safe-cracker who couldn’t help but tell witty jokes in order to comfort himself during the high-stress environment of the zombie-infested Las Vegas. It was clear to viewers that Dieter was a character that definitely had quite the checkered backstory, and many were left to wonder how he got started with his days of safecracking.

Schweighöfer‘s brand new prequel to Snyder’s film – Army of Thieves – delves deep into Dieter’s past, taking audiences on a wild ride, showcasing his earliest expeditions, friends, and foes he made along the way, and more. Although it’s not as good as Army of the Dead, it’s nevertheless a solidly entertaining heist film filled with great performances, some genuinely funny moments, and fun chase sequences.

If you go into this movie expecting some zombie goodness, you’re going to be left heavily disappointed because this film does not feature a single zombie anywhere throughout. Go into this expecting a straight-up heist film and you should have a decently good time with it as I did. Sadly, Army of Thieves isn’t a game-changing heist movie by any means. It follows the same tried-and-true formula that all of these movies do, and there is little room for surprise or shock here. It does follow things quite by the book.

And because it is a prequel to Army of the Dead – a movie that had Schweighöfer in a leading role – you know that by the time the end credits roll, the character of Ludwig Dieter will survive the movie, and thus, it’s not as tense as it could be. That being said though, you don’t know who else will survive the movie. Will any of his other teammates make it out with him alive in this movie? It’s actually quite fun to see where the story unfolds as conventional as it may be.

Schweighöfer proves himself to be a force to be reckoned with on both sides of the camera here. Before going in to see this film, I wasn’t sure how good of a director he’d be, but I was extremely happy to see that he definitely knows what he’s doing behind the camera. In a lot of strange ways, this is an incredibly comforting movie and it’s largely due to the fact that the people behind the scenes knew how to set things up.

The film is relentlessly paced and doesn’t really have any moments of true boredom, despite the fact that it runs at a total of one-hundred and twenty-seven minutes. The script from Shay Hatten always has something of intrigue involved in every scene to make sure that viewers don’t clock out at any point during the movie.

As I said earlier, it’s not as fresh or as exciting as Army of the Dead, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a solid movie in its own right. It can most definitely suffer from being quite conventional in terms of its story, not leaving much in the way of imagination and surprise. But Army of Thieves is a much-welcomed prequel that will entertain plenty.