The Code aka Den of Thieves (2009)

There are great movies and bad movies and all those in between. I have a great love of great movies and even a love for movies that are so bad that they’re good. Unfortunately The Code aka Den of Thieves is smack dab in the middle. It’s not good enough to be great and not bad enough to be good. It’s just a tired excuse of a heist film where everyone involved phones it in.

If you’re still interested the movie is a by the numbers heist film staring Antonio Banderas as Gabriel “Gabby” Martin as an impetuous jewel thief and Morgan Freeman as the veteran art thief Keith Ripley. The two meet as ‘Gabby’ is robbing two men on the subway. After some hemming and hawing by Gabriel they join forces to steel two Faberge eggs from a high tech security vault. Complications arise as Ripley’s Goddaughter is kidnapped. But *gasp!* things are not as they seem. I’m not going to give away the super secret plot twist but given that you have an intelligence greater than a brain dead gerbil you’ll figure out the supposed twist far before the ending comes.

Although the movie does start off fairly well and at least one plot twist is actually somewhat surprising, this movie is as dull as dishwater. None of the actors bring any effort to playing their roles, content with phoning in their performances and refusing to bring any sort of humanity to the characters. Gabby comes off as just a tad bit creepy as he pretty much stalks the main romantic lead. Although for some reason she finds this all very alluring. At the very least Freeman brings a certain gravitas to the Ripley character. But that’s mainly from Freeman playing himself. None of these characters are likeable or interesting.

The actual heist is very poorly executed. Such tropes as ‘avoiding the lasers’ and ‘cracking the safe’ are nothing more than flat renditions with very little life or action. The laser scene is particularly bad since they were so cheap that they didn’t even give us actual lasers, just a laser light show on Ripley’s iphone. Given that the whole movie was leading to this moment the whole thing just felt anemic and far too short.

This is not a movie to buy, neither for its greatness or badness. It is a bland and regrettably forgettable heist film that deserves to languish at the bottom of a bargain bin. Since there are so many other better heist films I would suggest moving on to something else.

I bought this movie for $5 CND at Wal-Mart.