The Last Heist (2022) – Film Review

Cirector: Coz Greenop
Cast: Terry Stone, Perry Benson, Emily Wyatt
Certificate: 18

By Roger Crow

There are several points of merit regarding this new Brit crime thriller: it’s well shot, nicely edited, and the cast aren’t bad.

If you can get past the first hour, then a twist, when it comes, isn’t bad at all. But oh the swearing. I don’t mind a good potty mouthed scene if necessary, but there are so many F and C bombs here, it interrupts the script too much; it’s like trying to get from A to B but stopping every 30 seconds for verbal speed bumps.

Naturally it’s also reminiscent of many superior movies, from Reservoir Dogs and The Long Good Friday to Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Point Break (bank robbers dressed in US President masks), and more recently Bull. The latter was one of those brutal crime capers which was also well put together, and also featured a twist that explained everything that had come before, but at a price.

“One to watch”

For a movie clocking in at a reasonable 80-plus minutes, there’s no danger of The Last Heist outstaying its welcome. But if there was an 80-page script, I’m guessing every page had dialogue on it. Lots of dialogue, and here’s the thing: it didn’t need it, just like it didn’t need all the swearing, because this is a film, not a radio play, and wow there’s a lot of talking. Far too much. Chas and Dave might have compared the script to one of their best loved songs, and yes, the characters here do have more ‘rabbit’ than a popular supermarket.

Inside No 9 raised the bar so high for compact dramas and black comedies with a twist that a film like this would have been so much better in the hands of Pemberton and Shearsmith.

Yorkshire-born Director Coz Greenop is one to watch in the future however, and The Last Heist is worth at least one look, but by the end you may be wondering if the price of that rug pull was worth the wait.