Robbery is a 2019 crime drama about a young thief who plans a series of reckless heists in order to pay off a dangerous gambling debt while taking care of his father.
Richie (Jeremy Ferdman) is on a rough stretch, a petty criminal in a real hole, a gambling debt pushing into the corners. He owes casino owner Roxanne (Jennifer Dale) fifty grand but the takes he’s getting from convenience store hits isn’t doing it. He needs to go big or else he’s gonna suffer, but he doesn’t have the know-how to pull off a big heist. Fortunately, he knows someone who does, his father Frank (Art Hindle), a lifelong thief with enough up in his head to save his son’s skin. Problem is, he’s sinking into dementia, fast. Time is ticking. However, when Richie meets Winona (Sera-Lys McArthur), she offers him a plan that could change everything, but at what cost?
A modest independent release, writer and director Corey Stanton‘s genre-mixing Robbery is a small but affecting film, combining the usual scheming heist formula with a tested father/son relationship. It’s a curious blend to be sure, one that works to balance a heady crime drama with that of a young man facing the loss of his dad, or at least his mind. It’s an intimate take on something typically finding itself larger in scale on the big screen.
That doesn’t leave this any less impactful, Staton never looking to overextend his reach, keeping it local and confined, even with the late introduction of Roxanne, a deteriorating queen atop a messy throne, overlooking a drug-addled landscape of ruin she calls her own. It’s a unique take on a time-tested character, one dominated by weighty men, here given jarring strength from a standout performance from Dale, who plays her withered and physically weak yet undeniably in control of her small dominion. She shifts the entire dynamic of the story, lending everything we see about Richie to then a sudden harrowing truth.
Staton doesn’t hold back, slowly building the first third of Robbery with a kind of purposeful pace that almost betrays the brutal turns it takes when we hit the middle. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a graphic film, some of that brutality manifesting itself as emotions and consequences rather than in split blood. There’s a couple of clever moments in the set up and delivery of the heist and more so in the relationships that Richie finds himself entangled in. These are the best parts of the film.
Not all of it works, the casino itself not entirely convincing, the limitations of the production hampering a bit of the believability, while some of the drama doesn’t land with the tump intended. That’s to be forgiven though, Staton and his cast deeply embedded into the thick of this, enough so that despite some of the rough edges, Robbery sets itself apart, leading to an ending that subverts some of the standards of the modern crime caper in favor of something a little more personal. Recommended.