Honest Thief

Directed by Mark Williams, Honest Thief follows Liam Neeson’s Tom Dolan, a master criminal who’s stolen more than $9 million, as he attempts to turn himself in after meeting and falling in love with Kate Walsh’s Annie Wilkins – with complications ensuing after the two FBI agents (Jai Courtney’s John and Anthony Ramos’ Ramon) assigned to the case decide to keep the money for themselves. It’s a decent-enough setup that’s employed to often astonishingly forgettable and uninvolving effect by Williams, as the filmmaker, working from a script written with Steve Allrich, delivers a sluggish endeavor that suffers from a whole host of incompetent, underwhelming elements – with, especially, the inauthentic, on-the-nose dialogue and hopelessly low-rent visuals perpetuating the movie’s less-than-captivating atmosphere. There’s little doubt, then, that Honest Thief‘s tolerable vibe is due almost entirely to the efforts of an impressively stacked roster of performers, with Neeson’s predictably solid turn as the beleaguered hero matched by an eclectic supporting cast that includes Jeffrey Donovan and Robert Patrick – although, ultimately, the actors’ stirring work is unable to compensate for a thriller that is, by and large, almost entirely devoid of thrills.

** out of ****

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