The Vault *** (2017, James Franco, Taryn Manning, Francesca Eastwood, Scott Haze, Clifton Collins Jr, Q’orianka Kilcher) – Movie Review

While not entirely satisfactory or completely satisfying, there are many very good things about co-writer/ director Dan Bush’s edgy and tricksy 2017 horror thriller The Vault. Certainly, it is in the interesting category.

When it’s a straight bank heist thriller, it is so good that you want it to keep going along that exciting track. It feels nice and tense and tough, and is compelling. When it changes tack and reveals its hand, its cards are limited, playing the game rather short of a winning hand.

Part of its problem is that it doesn’t manage to conceal its mystery twist well enough, so you feel one step ahead of it all the way. It’s like an Agatha Christie where you’ve already guessed in the first reel whodunit (I never do by the way).

If it seems a bit of a muddle as a piece of story-telling, that may be the strain of the effort to keep its mystery mysterious. Admittedly, bank heist thrillers are ten a penny, so you have to come up with a new spin to keep the customers satisfied – and this, commendably, kind of does, even if it is not much of a one.

Nevertheless, The Vault is tense and creepy a lot of the time, even exciting, and ends up good enough, and interesting enough, and likeable enough, with James Franco, Taryn Manning, Francesca Eastwood, Scott Haze, Q’orianka Kilcher and Clifton Collins Jr heading a good cast, who are all up for it.

A weirdly moustachioed Franco is well used in a chunky ‘and James Franco’ co-starring role as the mysterious bank employee Ed Maas. Manning and Eastwood are pretty scary as a couple of estranged bank robbing sisters Vee and Leah Dillon, while Scott Haze is OK as their brother Michael, whom they are trying to save by robbing the bank. And I really liked Jill Jane Clements as bank teller Mary.

It’s one of those middling movies that you’d quite like to see again and check out how it runs when you’ve been told its secrets. So okay then.

Francesca Eastwood.

Francesca Eastwood, who is married to Collins Jr, is the daughter of Clint Eastwood and actress Frances Fisher.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Movie Review

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