A review by holdmybookmark
The Heist, by Janet Evanovich, Lee Goldberg
2.0
What do you get when you assemble a rag-tag group of criminals and miscreants, including a shlock horror film director, a carpenter, an egotistical actor, a driver, an FBI agent, and a con man, to run their own covert con for the government? You might think this would be a setup for comedy gold, but it meanders into B-level sitcom territory.
// FBI Special Agent Kate O'Hare must track down a notorious con-man and use him to help take down an even bigger mark. //
Okay, so this started out pretty well. O’Hare seems like a fun gal with a quirky personality, but she has a penchant for narrowly missing her mark. Her mark is Nick Fox, a con artist who always gets away but does so in the most flamboyant way, all the while flirting with Kate. The overall setup was fun in the beginning, but the observational humor really did not do it for me. Don’t get me wrong. I love a good joke, wisecrack, and pun, but when fast food name drops, TV show titles, and references to book plots are your mic-drop moments, I find it more eye-rolling than rolling on the ground with laughter. For example, Kate says the guys that she has dined with the most in the past few years have been Colonel Sanders, Long John Silver, Ronald McDonald, and the Five Guys. I rest my case.
// “The best way to win at a game of chance is to remove chance from the equation.” //
The cat-and-mouse games are supposed to be fun! I had a hard time getting into the espionage moments because the amount of foreshadowing was overwhelming. You could guess exactly what was going to happen around every corner, and I think that it was by design. A quick quip or a throwaway joke does not mask the fact that the setups are just not exciting or plausible in any way, shape, or form. I don’t know; everything felt extremely written and surface-level. It had quite a bit of potential. An Ocean's Eleven comedy sounds great, but it just missed the mark in my opinion. I will give it one thing though. The vehicles that were selected to do the cons were exquisite, beautiful, and out of the box. I’m looking at you, 60s-era Jaguar E-type. <--- favorite car of all time. right alongside the DB5 and the F40.
// “Sometimes when a plan is right, everything else, all the things you can’t control, falls into place just the way it should.” //
I’m king of struggling to think of anything else. It was just ok; would I recommend it? Probably not, but if the comedic parts worked for you, then you might like it. It just did not work for me.
──∗ ⋅◈⋅ ∗──Extra
// FBI Special Agent Kate O'Hare must track down a notorious con-man and use him to help take down an even bigger mark. //
Okay, so this started out pretty well. O’Hare seems like a fun gal with a quirky personality, but she has a penchant for narrowly missing her mark. Her mark is Nick Fox, a con artist who always gets away but does so in the most flamboyant way, all the while flirting with Kate. The overall setup was fun in the beginning, but the observational humor really did not do it for me. Don’t get me wrong. I love a good joke, wisecrack, and pun, but when fast food name drops, TV show titles, and references to book plots are your mic-drop moments, I find it more eye-rolling than rolling on the ground with laughter. For example, Kate says the guys that she has dined with the most in the past few years have been Colonel Sanders, Long John Silver, Ronald McDonald, and the Five Guys. I rest my case.
// “The best way to win at a game of chance is to remove chance from the equation.” //
The cat-and-mouse games are supposed to be fun! I had a hard time getting into the espionage moments because the amount of foreshadowing was overwhelming. You could guess exactly what was going to happen around every corner, and I think that it was by design. A quick quip or a throwaway joke does not mask the fact that the setups are just not exciting or plausible in any way, shape, or form. I don’t know; everything felt extremely written and surface-level. It had quite a bit of potential. An Ocean's Eleven comedy sounds great, but it just missed the mark in my opinion. I will give it one thing though. The vehicles that were selected to do the cons were exquisite, beautiful, and out of the box. I’m looking at you, 60s-era Jaguar E-type. <--- favorite car of all time. right alongside the DB5 and the F40.
// “Sometimes when a plan is right, everything else, all the things you can’t control, falls into place just the way it should.” //
I’m king of struggling to think of anything else. It was just ok; would I recommend it? Probably not, but if the comedic parts worked for you, then you might like it. It just did not work for me.
──∗ ⋅◈⋅ ∗──Extra