I had a bit of an issue going into this prequel to the zombie heist film Army of the Dead… specifically that this centers on the most annoying character from that big budget zombie film. The one I liked the least… the Germans safecracker. So why do we need a prequel with him?

Army of Thieves takes place during the opening days of the fall of Las Vegas as scene in the opening credits of Army of the Dead. The German safecracker is not a criminal… he’s an amateur safecracking enthusiast with a special fascinating for four infamously hard vaults created by a fan of Wagner’s The Ring Cycle. So he’s recruited into a small crew of thieves to pull off three heists during a time when the world’s focus is on this zombie apocalypse in America.

I’ll say this much… this film is pretty energetic and focused on being fun, funny, and not too serious. I do appreciate the camera work and energy of the editing and shots. Some of the actors are pretty good and I was especially happy to see Nathalie Emmanuel (from Game of Thrones and the later Fast movies).

And, for a while, this pacing and a little of the sense of humor was carrying me along. But then I realized there’s only so much drama I can get out of fly-throughs of elaborate locking mechanisms while some German twit has his ear to the safe. And they had the gall to do this for three different safes (the fourth being in Army of the Dead, which was nice connective tissue).

Basically this movie is over two hours long and doesn’t have the meat and potatoes to sustain it. It was stretched out, tedious, and over-indulgent. Someone needed to tell the writer and director that less is more and repetitive is not thrilling.

Still, there’s some decent moments, a couple good laughs, and a few nice meta jokes about the heist genre. This isn’t the worst and it’s quite possible you might find the whole affair a lot more interesting, funny, and exciting than I did.

Score: 73