The Pineville Heist

The Pineville Heist follows teenager Aaron Stevens (Presley Massara) as he’s forced to fend for his life after stumbling upon the aftermath of an armed robbery, with the bulk of the storyline detailing Aaron’s subsequent attempts at evading a vicious criminal within the confines of a local high school. Shot on an obvious shoestring, The Pineville Heist is a well-intentioned thriller that is, to an increasingly distressing extent, rife with less-than-engrossing elements that render its few positive attributes moot. Ranking high on the film’s list of insurmountable deficiencies is an atmosphere of almost extreme amateurishness, as director Lee Chambers, working from a script cowritten with Todd Gordon, proves unable to elicit anything resembling a professional performance out of virtually all of his actors. (Carl Bailey delivers a scenery-chewing turn as the movie’s moustache-twirling villain that stands as a rare highlight within the proceedings.) The pervasively lackluster vibe ensures that The Pineville Heist is almost entirely devoid of thrills or suspense, which is a problem, certainly, given that virtually the entire second half plays like a low-rent riff on Die Hard. It’s ultimately clear that cinematography is the one area in which The Pineville Heist mildly succeeds, as D.P. David Le May infuses the proceedings with an impressively cinematic feel that often compensates for the otherwise lifeless narrative – and yet this isn’t quite enough to elevate the movie above its consistently underwhelming atmosphere.

* out of ****