There’s nothing to Courtney’s character beyond greed. But everything happens so quickly, and with so little build-up of suspense, that the many shady dealings and double-crosses throughout “Honest Thief” don’t register as powerfully as they should. Such seemingly complicated characters traveling in such murky circles should be compelling. And what should be a straightforward transaction turns violent when Courtney’s Agent Nivens gets the bright idea that he and Ramos’ Agent Hall should take the money for themselves instead. So they humor him by sending their underlings, a scenery-chewing Jai Courtney and an underused Anthony Ramos, to pay him a visit at the hotel where he’s waiting for them. ![]() They’ve heard way too many false confessions over the years. Trouble is, the old-school agents he dials up ( Jeffrey Donovan and Robert Patrick) don’t believe him. As patient as he was planning and executing all his crimes, he’s in a hurry to get them behind him. But Tom is an honest thief, and he’s hoping that by cooperating, he’ll get a reduced sentence. Sure, he could have just dropped it off anonymously and started over. So he tries to turn himself in and turn over all that money to the FBI. A year later, they’re in love, and he’s so taken by her (pun intended) that he wants to go straight and forge a new life together. But when he steps into a Boston storage center to stash all that loot, he immediately connects with the pretty, quick-witted woman behind the counter: Kate Walsh’s Annie, who works there to help pay for grad school. When Liam Neeson’s Honest Thief is earning maybe 1/3 of what it otherwise would have grossed, then I get the studios not wanting to throw otherwise surefire biggies like Black Widow and No Time to Die to the wolves.The premise alone is intriguing from director and co-writer Mark Williams, co-creator of the series “Ozark.” Neeson stars as Tom Carter, a legendary bank robber known as the “In and Out Bandit.” (It’s a moniker he loathes, since it makes him sound haphazard, and he prides himself on his precision.) Tom has stolen $9 million from 12 banks across seven states over several years. Yes, it was a mostly empty theater (as was usually the case for a movie like this on a Friday morning) and yes, I wore a mask, but it was nice to be back, and it’s sadly ironic (if understandable) that California theaters started to reopen just as Hollywood essentially took their ball and moved to 2021. I don’t want to oversell it, but The Empty Man was also my first casual theatrical moviegoing experience since Emma back in late February. ![]() Yes, it very much peaks in the first 75 minutes, but it’s well-acted (Stephen Root gets a terrific extended cameo), surprisingly colorful and impressively “big” in terms of scale (it’s like a Scream Gems flick with actual production values) and occasionally unnerving. The 137-minute (including an ambitious, snow-bound 23-minute prologue, natch), R-rated horror flick is exactly the kind of thing that gets a D+ from Cinemascore, but I somewhat enjoyed it. Written and directed by David Prior, the James Badge Dale-starring supernatural thriller earned $1.265 million from a $450,000 Friday (an okay 2.81x multiplier) is based on Cullen Bunn and Vanesa R. Disney released 20th Century Studios’ The Empty Man into 2,027 mostly empty theaters.
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