This is your basic car chase jewelry heist movie. There's not much more to say about it. There's times when it drags through angst, scenery shots, too long situation setups, etc. but it's still a car chase jewelry heist movie.
I have to say that of the characters/actors there was uneven character development and uneven usage of actors. Let me explain.
Halle Barry's character is the most developed. She works at a high end insurance company and finds out that she's never getting the promised partner spot because she's too old. They use pretty young women to get contracts. She finds this out after admittedly screwing up while trying to get a billionaire to sign on for insuring his stuff and his wedding. It shows her spiraling down into making a bad decision because she's upset and rightly so.
Mark Ruffalo's character is the police detective who's gotten the robbery pattern and no one believes him. His boss is trying to get him to go along with the department line, both on that and on covering up dirty cops. He figures out he's at a decision point in his life.
Chris Helmsworth does as well as he can as a socially awkward thief with a conscience. He does his research, he avoids violence, he only takes what's insured. The awkwardness is really overdone and tied back to his time in the foster system. This comes out when he finds a girlfriend, literally by accident. She forces him to open up.
Barry Keoghan gets the short end of the character development stick. He doesn't have much to work with and while he tries, there's just nothing there.
Nick Nolte is all but unrecognizable and unintelligible. Luckily he's barely in the mix.
Chris does the research to steal jewelry, does the crime, and Nick fences the goods. He's nominally in charge so when Chris gets to the point of wanting to be done with it he's the one who brings in Barry to do a job that Chris won't. Somehow all the research he did is available to the other guy. Dunno.
The whole thing goes through Mark's detective working diligently to find Chris and gets a hit from a tiny bit of blood that was left - the first thing ever left at one of the scenes. They do show how careful Chris is not to leave evidence by having him exfoliating skin and rubbing out stray hair plus wearing colored contacts since his eyes are all that's visible in the ski mask he wears, but then he's not wearing gloves when he's touching things so there's that.
Barry is shown as far less controlled and willing to use violence when he does the job that Chris wouldn't do. It sets him up for being kinda not the kind of person you want working on high risk jobs that require control and precision. But there you go.
Mark's closing in, Chris's girlfriend is getting pushy, Halle decides to take Chris up on his offer to split the heist from her company then gets cold feet and brings in Mark. Barry is also going to go for the same stuff so that's the big showdown.
The ending isn't exactly what I expected. Mark takes the place of the courier with the diamonds that will be paid for in cash, by the billionaire as wedding favors. He uses fake diamonds from a previous case that he gets illicitly because he's suspended from duty for a previous thing that wasn't anything he did. Chris takes the place of the driver so the two of them talk, with Mark knowing who Chris is but Chris not knowing who and what Mark is. Barry sets himself up to get into the room to take the jewels and money.
The guns come out. Barry shoots the billionaire when he's making a fuss then aims at Mark who has a gun now. Chris also has a gun and is pointing it at Mark. Chris ends up shooting Barry because he was going to shoot Mark, the detective. Chris is very upset about this since it's violence.
Mark cleans everything up. He takes the diamonds, tells everyone that he shot Barry, Chris wasn't there, and that nothing happened when the police get there. The billionaire is fussy but his fiancé is surprisingly practical about following instructions and putting him in his place.
Chris drives out of town but goes back for his girlfriend. Mark gives diamonds to Halle, who had quit in a most satisfying manner. Chris left his classic car for Mark who had said he'd wanted one like it during their conversation. I think Chris also gives the detective the information to bust Nick so there's that end tied off. So everyone gets their happy ending, so to speak.
Of course they don't say anything about how Halle is going to fence these huge diamonds to get money. They don't say how the suspended detective gets through with a fatal shooting. I'm guessing he also kept some diamonds and is now going to retire since he's disillusioned with the police force. The ending is kind of sloppy for those reasons.
I will say that Mark Ruffalo has some of the most incredible bedhead I've seen in a long time.
Watching Chris Helmsworth not be swaggeringly arrogant and confident was interesting. It got a little old because his physical traits were fidgeting and not making eye contact. They were overdone to make sure everyone noticed them.
Halle got punched in the face by Barry as part of her giving up information and honestly that was the absolute worst black eye makeup I've seen in a movie. It started out with some dark coloring and within a couple of days it was barely there. No swelling, nothing. Just some smeary smokey eye makeup so that she could take off her sunglasses to show she had a "black eye". Terrible.
Then again this isn't the kind of movie you go to for deep meaning. There's some beautiful shots of the 101 highway snaking through the city with the cars. There's the classic staggered traffic for when there's car chases and motorcycle stuff. There's not a lot else to do but sit back and watch the pretty people in the pretty city doing .. stuff.
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