So much average

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

I don't know if they used DSLRs or something similar to record, but the quality of the lenses they used is horrible. Blurry images everywhere. People record better quality YouTube videos of product reviews these days, and this is a film. The acting is not very good either, looks pretty fake unfortunately.

So I thought this movie was something totally different. I actually thought this was a movie that came out years ago in which DeNiro played a burglar alongside Edward Norton. Come to find out that the title of that movie was The Score. Although there was a movie called Heist from 2001 with Gene Hackman. This was neither of those. This wasn't nearly as intelligent as either of them. In fact this movie was hardly watchable, which is extremely disappointing since DeNiro was in it. The plot is fairly simple considering the title: there was a heist. Negan, er um Jeffrey Dean Morgan, plays a struggling card dealer whose daughter is sick. He needs a ton of money to keep her on the list for a critical surgery. I didn't get it wrong, I said he needed money to keep her on a surgery list. I never knew you had pay for that. So the scene is set with that simple backstory. And everything that followed was truly simple. The entire operation, the behavior of the principal actors, and the decision making was appalling. A-PALL-ING. There was a series of some absolutely deplorable decisions that made no sense. I know that misdirection was the driving force behind a lot of the events but like Danny Glover said in Lethal Weapon, "I'm too old for this ****". Be more creative, be more intelligent, or just be better.

When is crime justifiable? Never, …but….That seems to be the philosophical question mulled in this fast beat thriller as written by Stephen Cyrus Sepher and directed by Scott Mann. While the film is primarily one of action, the impact of the starting characters is such that the theme seems more thoughtful than most action films.A father Luke Vaughn (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is without the means to pay for his daughter's medical treatment. As a last resort, he partners with a greedy co-worker Cox (Dave Bautista) to rob a casino owned by the agile but terminally ill man called The Pope (Robert DeNiro) and his maniacal right hand man, Dog (Morris Chestnut). When things go awry they're forced to hijack a city bus 657 driven by Bernie (DB Sweeney) and take the passengers hostage. Now, in a high speed chase, Vaughn will not only have to outwit the police, led by Officer Bajos (Gina Carano) who are in hot pursuit, but he will have to contend Dog in order to make it through the day alive. But we quickly learn that things are not what they seem, and Vaughn has more than one card up his sleeve.Clever, well conceived plot with many twists and turns and brought of by a very fine cast, including small parts by Kate Bosworth, Stephen C Sepher (yes, the writer!), Christopher Rob Bowen, Alyssa Julya Smith, Hawn Tran, and Tyler Jon Olson. A solid thriller worth an evening's watch.

In the intro two guys are being enhanced-interrogated by some guy. He wants to know who stole the $10k. Then the boss arrives and gives one of those villain speeches about his rules and why he can't have people steal money from him. The two don't end up well.Some guys in clown masks are running. They stop and hijack a bus.Now we are taken a week earlier. We meet a long-time casino employee named Vaughn. He's got a daughter with cancer who needs surgery but he has no money and the hospital is about to kick her out. He's got a few days to come up with the money. He tries to talk to Pope, the casino boss from the intro. But Pope recites the rules that the business is not a charity. Vaughn insists but gets himself beaten up by Pope's sidekick. Cox, a recent casino employee is watching all this attentively. And one night approaches Vaughn with a plan to steal money from the casino. Of course Vaughn isn't interested at first but changes his mind once he's out of options.Cox's plan involves two other guys. He has realized that once a week a guy shows up in the casino and purposely loses a ton of money every time. A couple of days later another guy shows up every week who always wins at the roulette. Clearly the casino is laundering money, which means if they steal it, Pope isn't going to go to the police. Cox's initial plan is no good so Vaughn suggests they go in a specific time a guard goes on coffee break, kill the lights for some reason, and walk into the vault for which he has the codes and then just walk out. Cox insists on bringing weapons, Vaughn protests in vain.The day of the heist the gang makes it into the vault and grab the money but on their way out the guard is back so they shoot him. The lights going out alerts the bad guys of course so they are watching out. And when they see our three guys a shootout ensues. That causes the fourth guy waiting outside in the car to leave in a hurry.So now we're back at the beginning the with the guys running on the street and hijacking the bus. For some reason one of them shoots his pistol in the air. That catches the attention of a cop parked nearby. Now the chase is on.On the guys was shot and needs assistance. Vaughn starts talking to the cop and since he sounds reasonable, she believes him and helps him out. In turns out Cox is pretty out of control so Vaughn is indeed the reasonable one looking out for the bus passengers, who include a pregnant woman, a vet student, an Asian kid, and a guy in a beaver suit. There are some others as well but we don't learn anything about them.Meanwhile Pope's sidekick is researching and going after the guys on his own to get the money back no matter what. Pope warned him not to get Vaughn's family involved. We learn that Pope has cancer and wants to leave the business to his only daughter. But she wants nothing to do with the corrupt affair.In charge of the police operation is a young hotshot detective who also seems to be willing to do any unorthodox thing to stop the bus which is now heading to Texas followed by news choppers and cops. Along the way of the movie there are a couple of neat surprises.There seems to be a lot of hatred for this movie, not sure where that is coming from. Heist is a perfectly enjoyable heist/escape&chase movie. It benefits from a very strong cast: Morgan is always likable, De Niro, who frankly hasn't put much effort in his acting in a long time, actually does give it a try. Bautista, who hasn't had a lot of experience does have a lot of potential and this role is well-suited for him. Carano has always had trouble with her voice-acting but is starting to improve little by little. Perhaps the greatest surprise was Gosselaar, who hasn't had a chance nor has he tried to show some acting chops, does very well and projects some charisma. And the story worked for me overall. Sure, the final surprise which you do so coming moments before is a bit too much because it assumes some astonishing level of planning. But nevertheless, Heist is a strong good-hearted (is that what bothers people about it?) action thriller. It's not high on wild action and massive destruction as most action movies are these days. The actually heist isn't filmed so well and only takes a few moments. That would have been a perfect opportunity for a thrilling scene. It does have a good message though, that even the bad guys can occasionally do something good for others and that things aren't black or white but there's lots of gray in between.