How to Rob a Bank review: Nicholas Hoult stars in a highly watchable but uneven heist film

Thirty-plus years ago, the criminals in Reservoir Dogs began the fateful heist with their boss saying "let's go to work"; it's a sign of the changing times that the call to arms for the gang in How to Rob a Bank is "let’s make some content".

What we're dealing with here is a group of young, streetwise – and heavily disguised – villains, who not only carry out audacious raids but film themselves in the process and upload their exploits onto YouTube, TikTok and sundry other social media platforms.

They are the nagging thorn in the side of John West (John C Reilly), head of the FBI’s robbery division, exasperated by the perpetrators taunting the authorities and becoming folk heroes by attracting 30 million unique viewers.

What are the motives of these camera-wielding, modern-day Robin Hoods?

Are they simply stealing from the rich to give to the poor, is it light-hearted protest or a deeper anti-capitalism anarchist agenda, or is it something more personal and closer to home?

Agent West decides to fight fire with fire by enlisting the help of someone equally savvy about the cyber world; stoner Reagan Gardner (Zoë Kravitz), a convicted hacker under ankle-tagged house arrest, is the creator of a programme capable of scanning online footage the FBI hopes will find hidden connections that lead them to the bad guys' lair.

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Consequently, director David Leitch's film is not only a high-octane thriller but also a chalk-and-cheese buddy movie, with a curiously out-of-place subplot centred on gang leader Ryan, aka "The Wolf" (Nicholas Hoult), and the family tragedy that weighs heavy on his shoulders when he's not fronting step-by-step guides for the robbers' fans to follow and pull off their own crimes.

Those guides provide most of the humour, The Wolf spouting broad statistics on how easy it is to get away with a successful job and posting QR codes on screen for followers to purchase guns and replicas of the felons' masks.

However, the tonal shift with Hoult as a more sombre and troubled figure away from his internet uploads is awkwardly handled, the overwrought melodrama tainting the bubbling, spicy soup of what is otherwise a white-knuckle caper flick.

The action sequences are loud and thrilling, managing to create a similar tension to the heist scenes in Michael Mann's Heat, aligned to the fast-edit techniques Edgar Wright employed in Baby Driver.

Character-wise, though, it's a frustratingly mixed bag, the brooding Hoult's back story is matched for misery by the circumstances of his second-in-command Hugo (Rhenzy Feliz), an Afghanistan war veteran struggling with his own demons.

Reilly and Kravitz are a likeable double act, the former's lived-in face and rumpled demeanour ideal for the role of a long-serving government man fearing his failure to capture The Wolf will be his ultimate career legacy (he's five years from retirement).

He has genuinely sparky, generational-divide chemistry with Kravitz's wisecracking slacker; the old guard and the new jockeying for position but – charmingly – bonding over a mutual love of another heist thriller, Kathryn Bigelow's Point Break.

It would have been good to see them share more screen time than they do, as their exchanges are always fun; similarly, Christian Slater's extended cameo (just two scenes) as a seedy, self-serving bank manager hits the spot and deserved to be a more substantive role.

The end result is highly watchable but uneven, a scattergun tapestry of edge-of-the-seat action, comic interludes and grim sidebars, and when Leitch attempts to get all his ducks in a row during the last act he stumbles into the zone marked "unnecessarily preachy."

Having said that, with a few tweaks to certain characters the set-up is robust enough for a second outing, wittily hinted at just before the closing credits – we may well see Reilly and Hoult lock horns again.

How to Rob a Bank is released in UK cinemas on Friday 13 November 2026.

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