The Taken series — starting with the first one, back in 2008 — turned Liam Neeson into an action hero, which he has embraced enthusiastically.
And who can blame him? Strike while the iron is hot.
Director Mark Williams’ Honest Thief — available via Amazon Prime — is an unremarkable, cookie-cutter thriller; even so, Neeson brings his customary dignified gravitas to the project.
Forced to go on the run with Tom (Liam Neeson), whom she suddenly realizes has been
concealing a lot about himself, Annie (Kate Walsh) begins to worry about her own
life expectancy.
The script, by Williams and Steve Allrich, is pure formula: a reasonable set-up, a despicable villain, a token (brief) car chase, familiar co-stars, a cute dog and a satisfying conclusion. All told, it’s a reasonable way to spend 99 minutes on a mindless Friday evening.
Boston-based Tom Dolan (Neeson) has been a master thief for years, carefully sussing out banks with older, easy-to-crack vaults. The smoothness of his one-man jobs has seen him dubbed the “In-and-Out Bandit” — a moniker he loathes — by the media and FBI agents who’ve never gotten anywhere near nailing him.
Dolan has amassed $9 million … but, oddly, hasn’t spent a penny. His motivation, we eventually learn, leans more toward retribution than avarice.
He has a chance encounter with Annie Wilkins (Kate Walsh, refreshingly age-appropriate), a clerk at the storage facility where he hides his ill-gotten gains. They banter briefly; the room’s atmosphere shifts.
Flash-forward one year.
Tom and Annie are a solid item, and he has given up on bank jobs, but nonetheless feels guilty about having to conceal his larcenous past. (One wonders what he has told her, in terms of how he earns a living, but this script doesn’t worry about such details.) He therefore decides to negotiate a trade: He’ll turn himself into the FBI, and return all the money, in exchange for a lenient sentence with visitation rights.
Enter local FBI Chief Sam Baker (Robert Patrick) and agent Sean Meyers (Jeffrey Donovan), who take Tom’s phone call. They don’t initially believe him, because they’ve been hearing from all manner of nut-jobs who claim to be the In-and-Out Bandit.
The irony here is amusing: Tom wants to come clean, but can’t.
