Empire State

Empire State

Empire State is an action crime film starring Liam Hemsworth, Dwayne Johnson, Emma Roberts and directed by Dito Montiel.

It tells the true story  of a heist that took place in 1982 where $16 million was stolen from the Empire State Armoured Truck Company.

So we meet Chris Potamitis, who settles for a security guard job after he fails to get into the police department. He is first assigned truck duty and goes out with a partner to collect and drop off money, but after a botched hijacking, he is assigned night duty instead. He discovers that the security at the main building is rather poor which is surprising seeing as it stores millions of dollars.

He decides to take a couple of thousand as he knows the money isn't counted so it won’t be noticed and after he gets away with it, he blabbers to his trouble making friend. This of course sets the wheels in motion to pull off a job and steal all the money in the vaults.

Now Empire State never made it to the theaters and went straight to DVD. When a movie goes straight to DVD it says that the studios just don’t have enough confidence that this film will do well financially and in most cases, this one included, they’re right.

The acting isn't all that perfect, although I have to admit that Johnson is getting better at his job. There also seems to be a few pacing problems as it seems like large chunks of the movie was left out just to get on with the story and due to time constraints.

Then there is the heist itself. This is of course nothing like Ocean’s Eleven or any other heist movie. The robbery is just so simplistic, so anti-climactic that you wonder how true to the story it actually is. Then again is it this simplistic approach and not a grand scheme that does give it that whole realistic feel.

 One thing I did enjoy in the movie was a change in culture. The movie is set in New York so normally one would expect either your typical Yankee or Italian families. But in this case they settled for a Greek family which seems to add a bit of freshness.

So with that in mind, Empire State gets a thieving 5 out of 10

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