the vault 2021 movie review

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The Vault Reviews

... Instantly forgettable. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Jun 23, 2022

Has a local flavor that makes all the difference. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 3, 2021

There's nothing wrong with The Vault, but there's nothing new either. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Nov 19, 2021

The result is a film as pleasant as it is recognizable. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 19, 2021

The international cast works perfectly and the production is remarkable. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Nov 16, 2021

Well crafted and smartly paced, The Vault is a glossy slice of high-octane fun.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 2, 2021

It deals with something familiar, but it's made with such elegance and style that it's possible, at times, to forget the myriad of clichés and more than worn twists. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 30, 2021

The Vault offers plenty of slick, heisty fun, but is hampered a bit by some unfortunate, charisma-sucking casting choices.

Full Review | Jun 6, 2021

In the hands of ... Balagueró, a formulaic film like The Vault may not serve up profound themes or even well-developed, multi-dimensional characters, but what it does offer may just be worth the investment in time, labour, and streaming fees.

Full Review | May 28, 2021

It aims to do for future heist films what Ocean's Eleven has done for the genre. But they did it first and did it better.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Apr 26, 2021

Nice editing mixes the hysteria of World Cup finals with sweaty vault raiding in this safe and sane procedural.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Apr 6, 2021

The scene, the setting and the characters are all familiar, but "The Vault" moves nimbly and efficiently through the motions. Consider this bank job a score.

Full Review | Mar 29, 2021

Requiring substantial forgiveness of its numerous logical gaps, this slick yet derivative British heist thriller never manages to raise the emotional stakes.

Full Review | Mar 27, 2021

Liam Cunningham and Freddie Highmore lead the sparkling cast of thieves just crazy enough to try to claim treasure buried deep under the Bank of Spain.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 27, 2021

Crackerjack direction and the performances are really fun.

Full Review | Mar 26, 2021

It's off-the-charts ridiculous and contrived, but if you can forgive that while enjoying the performances and the craft of the filmmaking, you'll have a good time.

The Vault is a film that has a pretty neat idea at its center, but never quite figures out how to make it into an exciting movie.

This spirited, fleet-footed heist tale feels like a lower-rent Mission: Impossible or Ocean's movie, but its intriguing puzzle and likable characters make it a pleasant distraction.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 26, 2021

If you like heist movies, you should take a look at this British-Spanish coproduction with Freddie Highmore, Sam Riley and Famke Jenssen.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Mar 26, 2021

Director Jaume Balagueró (Rec) mounts a handsome, intense thriller that falls flat only when it starts to take itself too seriously.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Mar 26, 2021

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‘The Vault’ Review: Freddie Highmore Helps a Team Break Into an Unbreakable Bank

Jaume Balaguero’s glossy caper recalls past heist movies without recapturing their suspense, idiosyncrasy or cast chemistry.

By Dennis Harvey

Dennis Harvey

Film Critic

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Retitled from the even more indistinct “Way Down” for U.S. release, Spanish heist “The Vault” stubbornly remains one of those movies you know you’ll be forgetting almost as soon as you finish watching it. There’s nothing really wrong with this glossy tale of a “mission impossible” raid on a heavily fortified Madrid bank to retrieve treasure, as slickly directed by Jaume Balaguero of the “[rec]” series. It’s just that a caper of this type needs tense set pieces, surprising twists, idiosyncratic characters or charismatic stars — ideally, all the above — to distinguish itself, and this one falls short in all those departments.

Viewers who really love this sort of thing may get caught up in the procedural aspects of the story anyway. But anyone desiring more from a heist movie than the genre’s familiar conventions professionally executed will find “The Vault” a bit empty. Saban Films is releasing the primarily English-language feature to U.S. theaters as well as digital and on demand March 26.

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A short prologue introduces the notion of treasure sunk to the bottom of the Atlantic in 1645, amid many sea battles between England’s Sir Francis Drake and the Spanish Armada. Some 365 years later, a crew of deep-diving salvagers find that lost booty. which crusty Walter (Liam Cunningham) has spent three decades searching for. But the moment they haul it aboard ship, it’s seized by tipped-off Spanish customs agents, having been exhumed from that nation’s territorial waters. The case is brought before an international court at the Hague, which sides with Spain. Sight unseen, still locked in its centuries-old chest, the mystery loot is dispatched to Madrid.

Popular on Variety

Meanwhile 21-year-old purported engineering “boy genius” — we know he’s one because someone calls him that every five minutes — Thom ( Freddie Highmore ) is in Cambridge fending off post-graduation job offers from multinational corporations. He’s more intrigued by an anonymous invite that leads to Walter, who wants the wunderkind’s help breaking into “a vault in the most secure location in the world.” It is one of the film’s major credibility gaps that we’re meant to believe supposedly-brill Thom would potentially trash his own future to steal back nonspecific valuables from a government, simply because some grumpy old rich dude thinks he’s entitled to them. Yet somehow it’s an offer our hero can’t resist.

Giving the kid a wary welcome are the others on Walter’s team: many-wigged changeling Lorraine (Astrid Berges-Frisbey), surly brawn James (Sam Riley), computer whiz Klaus (Axel Stein), and equipment man Simon (Luis Tosar). They must access a heavily fortified Bank of Spain HQ in Madrid, eluding not just umpteen guards and surveillance devices but obsessively dedicated Security Chief Gustavo (Jose Coronado). One advantage: This is July 2010, so the city is a distracting chaos of sports fandom as the World Cup nears Spain’s grasp.

That last element provides a diverting, large-scale background element, but might have been better woven into the narrative throughout than Balaguero and his multiple scenarists manage. They’re much more attuned to the functional details of the “cloak and dagger nonsense,” as at one point the protagonists’ mission is a little-too-aptly described. That results in some absorbing minutiae as our heroes don various guises and utilize myriad techniques to infiltrate the Fort Knox-like facility.

Shot in sleek, handsome widescreen on plush locations by DP Daniel Aranyo, “The Vault” looks the part of a dashing international caper à la “Ocean’s” films. But despite that surface sheen, as well as the occasional soundtracked prod toward a rollicking tenor (via songs from AC/DC, Sex Pistols, etc.), somehow the fun train never quite arrives. One team member’s betrayal is amply telegraphed, capping a series of intended surprises that feel safely formulaic. The lack of real tension in either quietly time-pressed or standard action-flick situations (including precipice-dangling and near-drowning) is underlined by our dull certainty that any tight corner gotten into will inevitably be wriggled out of at the last second.

All these actors have been fine elsewhere, yet here they fail either to coalesce as an ensemble or to shine individually. Instead they give a sense of treading in the footprints of more memorable gangs-o’-rogues going all the way back to “Big Deal on Madonna Street.” Highmore is a blah protagonist, Thom’s “genius” affirmed by the contrivance of him solving some logistical problem every other scene, and his eventual romantic chemistry with Berges-Frisbey never transcends Obligatory Plot Element status. Famke Janssen has a handful of arch scenes as an old frenemy of Walter’s.

Explaining why he’d commit high crimes with a bunch of strangers, Thom shrugs “Passion, and because it was impossible” — spelling out exactly the devil-may-care, crazy-adventure spirit that “The Vault” keeps indicating without ever capturing. The film is like a luxury vehicle that somehow fails to give joy, seeming wildly hubristic at the close when it assumes we’re stoked for a sequel. (In fact, we are wondering instead why this first ride ends without even a glimpse inside the still-locked treasure chest.)

There’s all indication here that Balaguero can handle the production resources and values of an enterprise considerably more expansive than his primarily-horror-angled prior features, some co-directed with Paco Plaza. But most of those movies, felt more comfortable with their genre conventions. “The Vault” has all the external factors that heist movies require. Yet without quite being dull, somehow it misses the danger, esprit and camaraderie we need for such escapades to achieve liftoff.

Reviewed online, San Francisco, March 23, 2021. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 118 MIN. (Original title: “Way Down”)

Production: (Spain) A Saban Films release of a Telecinco Cinema, Think Studio, Ciudadano Ciskul, El Tesoro de Drake production, in association with TF1 Studio. Producers: Ghislain Barrois, Alvaro Augustin, Francisco Sanchez, Ortiz Eneko, Lizarraga Arratibel, Freddie Highmore. Executive producers: Sandra Hermida, Paloma Molina.
Crew: Director: Jaume Balaguero. Screenplay: Rafa Martinez, Andres Koppel, Borja Glez. Santaolalla, Michel Gaztambide, Rowan Athale; story: Martinez, Koppel, Santaolalla. Camera: Daniel Aranyo. Editor: David Gallart. Music: Arnau Bataller.
With: Freddie Highmore, Astrid Bergès-Frisbey, Sam Riley, Liam Cunningham, Jose Coronado, Luis Tosar, Emilio Gutiérrez-Caba, Axel Stein, Daniel Holguín, Famke Janssen. (English, Spanish dialogue)
Music By: Arnau Bataller

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Cast & crew

User reviews

Freddie Highmore, Sam Riley, and Astrid Bergès-Frisbey in The Vault (2021)

A Tale Of Two Movies

Instant_Palmer
Mar 21, 2021

Y'all are spoiled

Jul 31, 2021

Not real life, just enjoy it

Sep 6, 2021

Entertaining heist movie, filmed in Spain.

Sep 9, 2021

Try to remember this is fiction

Nothing we haven't seen before..

Top_Dawg_Critic
Mar 20, 2021

Better than most Netflix movies

scoopdog-33483
Aug 16, 2021

not bad at all

abdullahgokcekesgin
Mar 12, 2021

It is a movie, not a real-life story! Just relax and enjoy it !

May 1, 2021

Fun and easy to watch

Too many problems.

Leofwine_draca
Mar 3, 2022

A heist movie worth your time

Apr 13, 2021

A New Story Based On A Standard Idea

Apr 11, 2021

Certainly flawed but watchable.

Aug 2, 2021

Entertaining!

paulclaassen
Aug 7, 2021

Exciting and original

bloomingstar999
Feb 12, 2022

no creativity

Mar 16, 2021

Solid heist movie

joscon-16616
Apr 19, 2021

Popcorn movie

mariannelisabeth

fun little caper

SnoopyStyle

Rapidly falls apart - absurd ending

Apr 9, 2021

Much better than most of the junk around at the moment

Clever heist movie.

Calicodreamin

God Save the Queen...

Mar 11, 2021
Mar 19, 2021

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