★★★★½
I went into this expecting a bad over-stylized white fratboy heist movie retread but i got something much sweeter.
Everything about this film centers on the facades that we put on every day in order to not just impress other people, but simply to be different. We're influenced so much by media and it freaking drowns us into us creating our own characters and telling our own stories that aren't necessarily true, but fit the narratives that we have in our brains to align with the facade.
This film is the most ANTI heist movie I've ever seen, as we not only watch the heist horrifyingly play out, but afterwords we REALLY see the effects of how it not only affected the criminals, but their victims and their families as well. It chokes their psyches. Really gave me Boogie Nights climax vibes. Sure, it is all straight white males performing this crime, but what it has to SAY about that is really interesting. They're fucking American Animals.
Great movie. Not Paddington 2 great, but still great.
I need to rewatch this. It's a 5 for me right now though, since the story was just not coming through for me, and it was slow and boring. I know I'm missing something and I should give it a 10, but something just wasn't there for me.
