I thought about Marty Scorcese's touch, I thought of A BRONX TALE, not only because of the presence of Chazz Palmintieri and also because the White lead has a relationship with a Black gal. There was a good batch of this kind of new wave vintage after all, this is certainly not a premiere, it began actually during the early nineties, just after GOOD FELLAS opened the road. There is a bunch of old timers here, Don Johnson, an overweight William Forsythe, Palmintieri and an agreeable characters symphony, where it is difficult not to feel empathy towards them. Heist is not the center of the movie but an important though and Quentin Tarantino's spirit is not so far either with a tongue in cheek elements which we begin to get used to since several decades now. It is not question of the big mafia, the powerful international mob, but only the petty thugs one, in the SOPRANO manner, and without being a comedy; only some light hearted spirit from time to time. I will finish by saying that THINGS TO DO IN DENVER has certainly inspired the screen writers and director of this feature. More or less same scheme and characters, spirit and atmosphere: a gang of petty gangsters rob the mob and then....

VAULT is a really poor attempt to recapture the kind of exciting, gritty heist movies of the 1970s a la DOG DAY AFTERNOON et al, mixing up the genre with a bit of gangsterism at the same time. The end result turns out to be a tiresome dud, and it's all down to the poor quality of the writing. The script seems obsessed with drawn-out romantic interludes while the performances are indifferent and the main actors feel out of their depth. Even a few cameos from seasoned old-timers like Don Johnson and Burt Young fail to excite. The heist scenes themselves are rather dull, and for me that's a cardinal sin.

It's 1975. The Mafia is powerful. Deuce (Theo Rossi) and Chucky (Clive Standen) are small time robbers. Deuce starts pursuing Karyn (Samira Wiley). The boys get caught. In prison, they are recruited by Gerry Ouimette (Don Johnson) who is tired of losing out to his Italian mob partners. The small group of criminals plan to steal $30 million from the mob in Rhode Island.

The production, the directing, and the script are all inferior. The Buddy thing is a little funny but in the end, director Tom DeNucci is a struggling Tarantino wannabe. He doesn't have the skills to pull it off. The movie moves too slowly and lacks tension. There are good actors here but they don't have a good overall orchestrator.