The heist movie genre is back in theaters this week, but with a new flavor. How to Rob a Bank releases on November 13, starring Nicholas Hoult, Zoë Kravitz, Christian Slater, Anna Sawai and John C. Reilly. Directed by David Leitch (Bullet Train), How to Rob a Bank brings heist jobs into the modern day with an emphasis on social media and technology.
In the film, a group of robbers -- led by Hoult's Ryan, dressed as a wolf -- don masks and broadcast their crimes via social media to gain an audience and build a following. An FBI agent (Reilly) has to team up with a hacker under house arrest (Kravitz) to track them down, but they also have to combat the appeal of the group's anti-capitalist motivations.
"There's so many great heist movies," Leitch
said in a recent interview with For The Win after listing classics like Bonnie and Clyde, The Town, Point Break and Bank Job as some of his influences. "But what drove, what actually like brought me to this project was, it was a heist movie with a twist. It was a heist movie for our time, and it had these two really interesting components for me as a filmmaker."
The success of the film for Leitch is both leaning on that technology, but also having an actor like Hoult to play the charismatic leader. "I think playing obviously with the new technologies of like the GoPros, the Insta 360s, and all of those cameras, but more importantly, creating an irreverent character persona online and a story that would actually create a movement," Leitch explained.
Hoult, who also plays villain Lex Luthor in the most recent Superman movie -- and the upcoming Man of Tomorrow -- loved the physical challenge that acting in a mask presents.
"I love acting in a mask. Any time that I can hide my face, it makes it easier for me," Hoult joked. "It is a fun heist movie, but relevant today because of the the social justice elements of it, and also this social media part of how these people are executing these these robberies and then putting them out and promoting them and creating a movement around them."
"We're creating this charismatic character in the Wolf, through a mask that has to draw an audience of of millions in, and he's using sort of like all this physical acting and like nonverbal comedy to make it happen," Leitch explained. "He does it instantly and has brilliant ideas."
How to Rob a Bank is in theaters Friday.
This article originally appeared on For The Win: 'How to Rob a Bank' director talks heist movie 'with a twist'
