The Misfits
There is no reason to watch this film.
The Misfits are a team of modern-day Robin Hoods, a group of nearly-superhero-like, best-there-is-at-what-they-do thieves, who recruit an international thief to help them break into a private prison that doubles as a storage facility for terrorist gold.
I do love a good heist film, even the overly-complex, more style than substance, kinda dumb, super silly ones, so of course I’m going to give this one a chance…
Richard Pace is a world-renowned thief in semi-retirement, and already a little bit bored by the life of a square. The Misfits are the best heist team in the business. Led by a bank robber and master of disguise named Ringo, a martial artist named Violet, a man named Prince (no relation), their financier, an explosives expert named Wick, and finally, there’s Hope, who doesn’t seem to have a specific role besides being Richard’s estranged daughter following in her father’s footsteps, these people want Richard’s help stealing millions in gold from a vault beneath a maximum-security prison. This prison also just so happens to be owned by one of Richard’s oldest nemeses, a man by the name of Warner Schultz, the Moriarity to Pace’s Sherlock, or vice versa, since Pace is the thief. Anyway, the catch is, the Misfits aren’t in this for money. The gold is used to fund terrorism, so their only goal is to cut off the bad guys’ cashflow, and to then spread the wealth among various needy organizations and communities.
Richard Pace, on the other hand, is interested in a big payday.
Pierce Brosnan was a great James Bond, even if his Bond movies were not all that great, and his remake of The Thomas Crown Affair was really fun too, and he is just as good here playing Pace. In fact, he’s the only one who seems to bring any real life to their role. Of course, that having been said, it’s the scene where he first runs into his estranged daughter that the film starts to drag, and it never recovers after that. That’s the basic story of this film, it starts decent, grinds to a halt, and only gets worse.
No wonder I had never heard of it before now, despite having been released in 2021.
On the whole, The Misfits is a trudge. There’s so little actual plot that it’s actually kind of insulting. The characters are bland. The dialogue is atrocious. The action is mediocre, and the heist is boring. There’s no passion, and nothing interesting, it’s all just laughably bad and cliched. Even worse, they’re half-assed versions of the cliches too. The climax of the film is a dull chase around a desert where it’s impossible to tell what’s happening or why, or where anyone is in relation to each other…
Simply put, this is just a bad film, poorly written and poorly executed.
The Misfits is yet another garbage riff on the “Fast and Furious” formula, all douchebag “style” and absolute anti-substance, specifically created to make money in international markets that don’t speak the language. Much like it’s ugly siblings, Lift and Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, the Misfits is cinematic McDonald’s, nothing but cotton candy garbage, an insubstantial and unfulfilling empty spectacle that spent way too much money on exotic locales, and not nearly enough on simply not having a shitty script.
Renny Harlin—a man whose name spellcheck absolutely refuses to allow you to casually type out—was once someone who knew how to deliver tentpole action films. Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Deep Blue Sea, they were never the best films ever, but they were still a pretty good time.
That was a long time ago.
Don’t bother with this one.