As generic as its name, Bandit recounts the career of Gilbert Galvan, a felon who flees the US for Canada in 1985. There he exploits national traits of kindness and trust to rob 59 banks. Played largely for laughs until it turns squishy, Bandit is pleasant but immediately forgettable.
Moviegoers love to watch crooks get away with heists, and Bandit‘s real-life angle adds another layer of potential to the film. Kraig Kenman’s script, based on a book by Robert Knuckle, covers incidents in Galvan’s story efficiently enough. The underpinnings of his behavior remain a mystery.
That’s the problem with Allan Ungar’s direction as well. Scenes unfold clearly enough, and some of the many bank robberies depicted do build tension. Still, Bandit is dismayingly superficial, from its 1980s production design to its needle-drop soundtrack to its almost complete disinterest in the feelings and motives of its characters.
Ungar adopts a lighthearted tone, letting Galvin (played by Josh Duhamel) deliver a jokey voice-over and steering away from the story’s darker elements. Galvin (known as Robert Whiteman for most of the film) is a nice guy in a bad business. Conscientious, nonviolent, clever, occasionally reckless, he is described by others as charming.
Duhamel’s charm factor is hit-or-miss, and while he gets how his character behaves, he doesn’t seem to understand why. He’s a blank in a film that desperately needs a better sense of time and place, of how Canadian society worked. As his girlfriend Andrea, Elisha Cuthbert is pleasant but not especially memorable. Nestor Carbonell plays Snydes, a Javert-like cop who pursues Galvin across Canada. It’s a perfunctory performance at best.
That leaves Mel Gibson as Tommy Kay, a sort of pimp and fence and minor crime lord who’s usually seen knocking back drinks in a strip club. Gibson’s been cancelled so many times that he’s having trouble scrounging up parts in low-budget B-films. Love him or hate him, he’s the best thing in Bandit. An unapologetic crook who can still lecture his teenage daughter about visiting strip joints, Kay is a master of his grimy, sordid milieu. Gibson makes the most of the role, but he’s not in the movie very long.
At points in the story Galvan tries to reform, promises to go straight. Then he drops right back into crime without a second thought. For all their own faults, movies like The Old Man and the Gun or The Grey Fox at least tried to examine the remorse their career criminals felt. Bandit bounces along from one robbery to another, from one stake-out to the next, from betrayals to double crosses with the same sunny indifference.
In Theaters, On Digital, and On Demand September 23rd, 2022. Photos courtesy Quiver Distribution.
Directed by Allan Ungar
Written by Kraig Wenman
Based on the novel by Robert Knuckle
Starring Josh Duhamel, Elisha Cuthbert, Nestor Carbonell, and Mel Gibson
