How To Rob A Bank Review: David Leitch Delivers Timely, Flashy Thriller With Thin Characters

David Leitch brings his kinetic style to a timely heist thriller that has plenty of energy and style, but lacks compelling characters.

Published Nov 11, 2026, 9:00 AM EST

George is a film critic and journalist with over nine years of experience in the entertainment industry. Beginning as the Co-Creator and Co-Editor of Star Wars Holocron, the most followed Star Wars fan account on Twitter/X, George went on to develop The HoloFiles, a movie and television-focused website with his brother and writing partner Josh.

A member of the Hollywood Creative Alliance, Chicago Indie Critics, Online Film and Television Association, and the Internet Film Critic Society, George has covered major industry events as credentialed media, including D23, CinemaCon, SXSW, Fantastic Fest, Star Wars Celebration, Tribeca Festival, and more. He also regularly writes reviews and contributes articles to ScreenAnarchy, BRWC, Film Obsessive, TV Obsessive, and Under the Radar. George's work has been featured in various esteemed publications, including the BBC, Associated Press, Forbes, and The New York Times.

After making his name as the co-director of John Wick, David Leitch has cemented his status as one of the more prolific action movie directors working today. He hasn’t always crafted the most groundbreaking or memorable films, but his kinetic directorial vision and proclivity for long, continuous-feeling takes more often than not results in compelling, tactile, and muscular action flicks. Following his pivot into action rom-com territory with The Fall Guy, Leitch takes another shift with How to Rob a Bank, this time bringing the heist thriller into the social media era.

How to Rob a Bank follows a crew of thieves (Nicholas Hoult, Anna Sawai, Pete Davidson, Rhenzy Feliz, and Tati Gabrielle) who livestream and broadcast their bank robberies online as a form of activism and rebellion. As their following grows, the crew end up in the crosshairs of veteran FBI Agent West (John C. Reilly), who teams up with expert cybercriminal Reagan Gardner (Zoë Kravitz) to put an end to their daring heists.

How To Rob A Bank Packs A Rebellious Message & Underdeveloped Characters

At one point in How to Rob a Bank, Zoë Kravitz’s character describes the bank robbing crew as “Robin Hood” and “punk,” three words that pretty succinctly describe the tone, energy, and central messaging of Leitch’s newest film. With editing and pacing that would make the likes of Edgar Wright and Guy Ritchie proud, the film unfolds with the rhythm of a music video and the addictive, can’t-take-your-eyes-off-the-screen quality that has people all over the world glued to their devices. Leitch’s movie moves at such a propulsive clip that its lack of substantive characters and sharp humor is fairly easy to overlook for much of its runtime.

The distinctive style, which mirrors the algorithmic opiate of scrolling endlessly on social media, gives How to Rob a Bank a unique identity to make it stand out from the many other heist thrillers out there. Leitch floods the screen with graphics, quick edits, colorful on-screen text, and more, as much of the film is comprised of the videos that the #HTRAB crew posts on YouTube. These videos prove entertaining, in an excessively caffeinated, late-night doomscroll kind of way, while also speaking directly to the audience.

If the title sounds more like an instruction manual or YouTube explainer video than the name of a movie, that’s because How to Rob a Bank is very much a call to action. No, Leitch & Co. aren't urging viewers to exit the movie theater and rob the nearest bank – but the film taps into issues deeply resonant to contemporary audiences, especially those living in the U.S. As revealed over the course of the film, the members of the #HTRAB crew all have personal motives that make them more than the average money-seeking thief. None of these render any of the characters particularly interesting; in fact, they are all about as thinly characterized as protagonists can be. Yet they harbor all too relatable grievances with the distinctly American flavor of capitalism that deprives decent, hard-working people of basic needs, namely affordable health care.

Even a trio of performers of the quality of Nicholas Hoult, Anna Sawai, and Pete Davidson can’t add depth to such one-dimensional characters.

With a little more meat to its characters to go with the resonant messaging, How to Rob a Bank could have encroached on greatness. Instead, it seems content to use its characters as loosely constructed, symbolic representations of capitalism’s failures, rather than fleshed-out, interesting people worthy of the audience's empathy and care.

Even a trio of performers of the quality of Nicholas Hoult, Anna Sawai, and Pete Davidson can’t add depth to such one-dimensional characters. Hoult does his best impression of Ryan Gosling in The Place Beyond the Pines (blonde hair, tattoos, white t-shirt, motorcycle, and all), but bafflingly delivers most of his dialogue from behind a mask while addressing the audience in YouTube videos, when he could have had more intimate scenes with a woefully underutilized Sawai as his partner in both life and crime. Davidson is given a bit more to do as a former soldier with a wife and young daughter to fight for, and it’s always nice to see him lean into a more dramatic performance. Yet, even his talents can’t elevate mediocre material.

How To Rob A Bank Lacks The Humor To Match Its Style

Facing off against the viral bank robbing crew is John C. Reilly’s John West, an FBI agent who has spent a career catching bank robbers, but finds himself stumped by the #HTRAB crew. Reilly is one of the rare actors whose mere presence in a project immediately elevates its quality and sophistication, and How to Rob a Bank is no exception. Despite being devoid of any semblance of a character arc, he brings personality to an otherwise underdeveloped role, and has an engaging back-and-forth with his Kravitz’s cyber-expert Reagan. The two make for a fun duo to follow, in particular because they are not conceptualized as traditional antagonists to the bank robbers, but rather people merely trying to do their job and maintain order in an increasingly unruly society.

For as stylized as it is, How to Rob a Bank is startlingly lacking in wit or levity, an issue made all the more egregious by the fact that it bolsters the combined comedic talents of Reilly and Davidson. When coupled with the absence of strong dramatic material, Leitch's movie leaves much of its entertainment value in the hands of its style and messaging – both of which are, admittedly, quite compelling. Though it falls short of becoming one of the greats, this heist thriller is still a breezy, diverting time at the movies.

How to Rob a Bank releases in theaters on Friday, November 13.

How to Rob a Bank

6/10