Amazon's eat-the-rich heist thriller lands November 13 with praise for its stunt work and a Reilly-Kravitz double act — and complaints that its TikTok-era satire stays skin-deep.
David Leitch's How to Rob a Bank hits Indian screens this Friday. The Amazon Studios actioner — produced by a company whose founder gets a cheeky on-screen nod, follows four masked robbers who livestream their heists, rack up millions of views, and dare the FBI to catch them. Nicholas Hoult leads the crew as Ryan.
Anna Sawai, Pete Davidson and Rhenzy Feliz round out the core four. John C. Reilly plays Agent West. Zoë Kravitz is Reagan, a cybercrime convict on house arrest recruited to help hunt them down. The premise is Robin Hood for the algorithm age.
The execution, early viewers say, is a mixed duffel bag. IGN's review pulls no punches. The film 'never actually has enough to say about the topic except for reinforcing that yeah, this sucks, but hey, at least you can make some fun videos about it.' The robbers' in-universe tutorials, animation overlays, loud sound effects, parkour flips with zero backstory, feel like Hollywood imagining Gen-Z content rather than the real thing.
Leitch and writer Mark Bianculli name-drop police brutality and school shootings through Kravitz's laptop stickers, then never follow through. Reilly and Kravitz's mismatched buddy dynamic is the highlight. IGN found itself wishing the whole movie had just been their show. JoBlo's first-reactions roundup lands softer.
Darren Movie Reviews calls it 'Robin Hood for the TikTok generation' that 'speeds by at a mile a minute with video tutorials and well directed practical chase sequences.' The trade-off: emotional connection stalls, the second half leans on tired heist clichés. David Ehrlich at IndieWire sums it up: 'Jeff Bezos says, eat the rich lol, in a poppy and half-fun Amazon Studios heist movie for the livestream generation. More than a little ridiculous, but when Nicholas Hoult tells you to do crime you do crime.' The Weekend Warrior's Edward Douglas urges patience, 'it definitely gets better as it goes along.' TheClubOrtiz disagrees: 'shallow and messy...
The pacing and muddled storytelling suck the life out of it.' Tom Chatalbash loved it, 'ferocious and propulsive blast... Leitch dials back his more over-the-top tendencies and delivers his most grounded film yet.' Rachel Leishman had a blast too, singling out Hoult's weight and a 'surprisingly deep performance by Pete Davidson.' Davidson's turn carries real-life weight.
He told Extra at the premiere that he found out he was going to be a girl dad the week shooting started. Daughter Scottie arrived December 2025 with ex Elsie Hewitt. His character has a daughter in the film. 'I was able to put myself in a place that, you know, I always heard about actors using stuff from their lives and stuff like that and that was the first time I was able to understand what the hell they were talking about.' He also gushed about Hoult, 'phenomenal actor, phenomenal father, great friend.' Anna Sawai told Extra the cast bonded over Heads Up between takes.
The film opens the same weekend as the tail end of Diwali holdovers. Amazon's marketing has leaned hard on the Leitch brand, Bullet Train, The Fall Guy, and the Reilly-Kravitz odd couple. Whether Indian audiences buy a satire about American banking inequality wrapped in TikTok aesthetics remains the open question.
Friday morning will tell.
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