What makes heist movies so fun and enjoyable is that the audience sees top professionals go against top professionals trying to steal the crown jewel. Unfortunately, there is none of that in Coin Heist and that’s where this film suffers the most. It fails to raise any stakes that seem realistic and overall just bores the audience to sleep with lackluster characters and a poor story.
Coin Heist is about a kid named Jason who is in this private school because his dad works in at some high level position and he’s on a field trip with his classmates to go to the US Mint. At the Mint, his father gets arrested for stealing $10 million. To save the school, he recruits 3 of his classmates to try to make messed up coins and then steal them to make the money back.
I did like the acting in this film surprisingly. I thought that Alexis G. Zall, Jay Walker, Sasha Pieterse, and Alex Saxon did great. The problem was that the characters were so one-dimensional and flat that they didn’t have a lot to work with. Zall and Saxon looked comfortable on screen probably from their YouTube and Vine careers. They all seemed to have good chemistry as well which made this film watchable at some points.
My main problems are with the overall scale of the story. They’re trying to break into the US Mint twice. I would like to see a real life team break into the US Mint once. It would be one thing if this was a private company, but the US Mint has US Military technology in it to prevent people from doing anything out of character. The fact that they basically got in by making other people call in sick and somehow get the van to match the other people’s is absolutely ridiculous. Why couldn’t the stakes be lower? Like what if they only had to steal $100,000 instead of $10 million?
The only experience that any of the characters have is that Walker’s character knows a little about cars, Zall’s character apparently hacked into a bunch of websites, and Pieterse’s character knows how to work some desperate dude. Saxon’s character does absolutely nothing and at least the film recognizes that a few times, but he really did just get in the way for a lame love interest twist at the end. I thought it was hilarious that the teacher and dean also turned at the end like they would actually not report this to the police.
I’m going to spoil the ending because this film is not worth watching at all. To call it anything more than an extended skit is pushing it. In the end, the dean would be caught because $10 million does not just appear out of nowhere. Also, this doesn’t solve any of Jason’s problems because no one will know about what he did and his dad is still in jail. He now has Zall as a girlfriend, but his problems are way worse than the benefits of dating Zall’s character.
Overall, if you’re really bored and want to see one of your favorite YouTubers on screen, then this movie might be for you. Otherwise, I’d steer clear.
Grade: D
