Sebastian (Matthias Schweighofer) has a dead end boring job during the day whilst making YouTube videos about safecracking that nobody watches at night. That is of course until he gets invited to an underground safe cracking ‘fight club’ which acts as his audition to join the heist of all heists. Can he crack three of the four most difficult safes in the world in the space of three days? 

Army of Thieves in case you were not aware is a movie prequel. It is also one of the oddest movie prequels I am aware of. Taking a single character from Zack Snyder’s Army Of The Dead it gives us a comedy heist movie that explains Ludwig Dieter’s back story (and name change from Sebastian) in a film that actually would have been much better without all the links to its higher profile cousin. Although of course without those links it would never have been made. 

So what DNA does it share? The zombie outbreak has just begun and can be seen on news clips and is jokingly referred to from time to time. There are also some tiresome recurring dream sequences about zombies that get old fast. Our characters all get an intro in similar style to Army of the Dead with a title card. Zack Snyder has a story by credit. A couple of characters from Snyder’s film make uncredited cameo appearances and there are some safe cracking heists. But the huge difference here is that this is more of a comedy with a bit of a love interest and some heists rather than a zombie movie! 

The nuts and bolts of this specific film mainly hinge on the charisma of its star Matthias Schweighofer who also directs. He lovingly tells us in detail about why the safes are so important to him thanks to the Ring Cycle operas by Richard Wagner and introduces humour at every turn. When he is on screen you are interested what will happen next. 

The team around him contains everything a heist team needs. Gwendoline (Nathalie Emmanuel) is the mastermind, Korina (Ruby O. Fee) is the hacker, Brad Cage (Stuart Martin) is the muscle and Rolph (Guz Khan) is the getaway driver. Whilst there is some delightful meta banter about how heists work in Hollywood movies the only character from this group that really makes an impact is Gwendoline. Not because she is particularly interesting but because Nathalie Emmanuel lifts her above the mundane through sheer star power and amazing hair styles that change in each scene. 

The love story is undercooked with very little chemistry. The double crosses make little sense. The Interpol agents chasing the team barely registered my interest. And the safe cracking scenes are essentially a lot of CGI of internal mechanisms rotating whilst Sebastian holds his head to the safe and turns a dial. Whilst all the zombie stuff is dead weight in a film that runs 2 hours 7 minutes long. But, it is a lot more fun than it has any right to be. In the main because of Matthias Schweighofer. 

Honestly I would not say to seek it out but if you are really stuck on an evening where you need Netflix to help you tune out, this should just about cover it.