REVIEW #64 Masterminds (2016)

Masterminds is a comedy/crime film directed by Jared Hess. It’s based on the true story of David Ghanatt, an employee for loomis who carried out one of the largest armoured vehicle heists in America history. Convinced by an old loomis colleague, David is duped by love and soon finds himself on the run from police and hired hitmen.


CAST & THE ACTING 

This film is heavily focused on the comedy, coming across as more of a gimmick then factual storytelling. Zack Galifianakis is David which indicates at the sort of comedy Masterminds is, he does brilliantly at injecting that silly humour from the start of the film all the way until the end. He has a great supporting cast with Kristen Wiig playing the role of Kelly Campbell and Owen Wilson playing her accomplice Steve. Kate McKinnon, Steve Sudeikis and Leslie Jones also appear in the film which makes up a pretty impressive comedic line up. The film isn’t going to win any awards of contributions to acting but it does fulfil its purpose of making the audience laugh and it does that quite well. 


PLOT & THE STORYLINE 

It’s hard to believe that this film is actually based on true events, David who is usually a stellar colleague is convinced by Kelly and her criminal friends to take on a huge heist of their employer Loomis. Kelly exploits David’s feelings for her and gets him to commit to a plan that would see him scammed out of the entire loot and on the run from the authorities. It’s sort of the perfect plot for the silly comedy this film is and it plays to the casts strengths. It’s not a storyline that gets you hooked on the story and invested into the characters because there isn’t any in depth exploration into them, it’s just funny sequences and one liners. However I believe that is the purpose of the film which is emphasised by the cast involved, so really they have got it spot on. 


CINEMATOGRAPHY & SPECIAL EFFECTS 

The cinematography was actually pretty good, It looked as though they used a particular camera or specific editing to give a dated finish to the frames which helped create the time period this film was set in (1997). This was emphasised by the costume design and props which further illustrated that time period. There wasn’t really any special effects to mention here because they weren’t needed. It also didn’t have the budget to commit to such effects with £25 million set for the overall budget. As I mentioned previously in the review, this was more of a gimmick comedy so the focus wouldn’t have been to create fantastic visuals with big special effect sequences.


OVERALL (7/10)

I think whether or not you will rate this film is based on your sense of humour, if you tend to enjoy Zack Galifianakis films and the type of comedy he produces then you’ll enjoy this film. If you find that sort of comedy exhausting then this probably isn’t the film for you. I must say I did laugh a lot whilst watching Masterminds and I think the cast ensemble worked really well together. The plot didn’t really have any substance despite it being based on true events but it complimented the comedy and made for a good film to watch nonetheless. 


Thanks for reading!

Callan



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