Parents' Guide to No Ordinary Heist

This oddly flat retelling of the Northern Bank robbery in Belfast in 2004 strips out much of the social and political context of the heist, leaving its two skilled leads to do their best with decidedly thin material. The always dependable Marsan gives a solid performance in No Ordinary Heist as bank manager Richard, convincingly portraying both his struggle to cope with the pressure of impending redundancies and the prickly personality traits that make him unpopular with his colleagues. Cast as his equally reluctant accomplice, Hardwicke does his best to make Barry more than a waster drawn into mortal danger, but is given no compelling dialogue with which to work. With no one ever convicted directly for the crime, the movie has no satisfying ending to head toward, and co-writer and director Colin McIvor arguably needed to make bolder choices. Given the decision to leave out the IRA's alleged ties to the robbery and focus on the human fallout, there's very little payoff here, with the subplots about the banks' employees and the kidnap victims both underplayed and uneven.