211 is a 2018 action film about a patrol cop near retirement who comes upon a violent bank heist that sees him caught in a fight for his life.
Pretty much any time we head to the movies these days, we roll our eyes at two things: anything that tells us the story is ‘based on true events’ and credits claiming it stars Nicolas Cage. That’s sort of too bad as plenty of great real life moments are worthy of screen time and for a while there, a Nicolas Cage movie was well worth getting excited about. With 211, his current meat-grinder approach in taking roles continues unchecked in another bland, generic action film that, sure, allows him to do some shouting, but is nonetheless a hugely disappointing night at the movies. Sadly, this is becoming the norm.
In the quite town of Chesterford, long-time patrol cop Mike Chandler (Cage) is thinking about retirement, glad at the choice as he cynically berates modern times. His partner is Steve MacAvoy (Dwayne Cameron), who is also his daughter’s husband, though Mike and she don’t see eye to eye. One day, Mike and Steve take part in the department’s ride-along program, taking trouble-making high schooler Kenny (Michael Rainey Jr.) out onto the normally safe streets for a few life lessons. Unfortunately, they drive up on the local bank where a heavily-armed team of mercenaries, led by Tre (Pori Pfeffer), are currently robbing the place, they taking some revenge on a deal gone bad for them with a double-cross. Chaos ensues as a firefight begins a battle in the streets where Mike needs to protect not only Kenny but his future grandchild’s father.
Over-shooting the whole inspired actual events thing, claiming its based on the 1997 Los Angeles bank heist, 211 is hardly a factual account, contriving that infamous and deadly encounter to somehow link it to this hopelessly trope-ish cops and robbers dud. With Cage all over the marketing and featured almost entirely in the trailers, you might think this a Cage movie, but he’s much more of a supporting character with the story focused more on Tre and his band of soldiers, who use their military expertise to great use defending their assault on the bank. We begin in fact, in Iraq, with Tre and his team (which include Cage’s real life son Weston Cage) who get shafted by their employer and so decide to go rogue.
Aside from the loopy story, 211 is Z-movie quality, with poor production and acting, stilted dialogue and uninspired direction, desperately stuffing in and checking off a long list of clichés before coming to a thankful end after only 86 minutes. These are standard boilerplate action characters and as such are paper thin with barely any motivation in any of them to make us care. From a ‘bad boy’ teenager who runs off to a pregnant woman to a cop close to retirement and more, it’s almost laughable at how aggressively obvious the whole film is.
Naturally, Cage is the only thing going for it, his barely there presence still strong enough to be the most impactful of the lot. Writer/director York Alec Shackleton can’t seem to wring from any of it a single moment of suspense, leaving this a forgettable mess.