The Crane Pool Forum

Four bored college students of privilege conspire to rip off one of their university's libraries of a handful of exceedingly rare volumes. Nobody is quite sure why they're doing it, but the judgment of young men being what it is, the caper takes on a life of its own.

Sounds like hijinks will ensue. Do I want to experience them?

You may appreciate the film, but it won't be hi-jinx you experience. It's more of a cautionary tale. Dostoyevsky-esque.

You see from the posters that this film has more than a little bit of Reservoir Dogs in its mindset. But it's based on a real story. (Actually, at the beginning of the film, they make the distinction that it isn't based on a real story; it is a real story.) It's also a quasi-documentary in that the film regularly pulls back from the dramatization of the story to include commentary from the actual young men involved, as well as their family members, and eventually, their victims.

The four guys who perpetrate the heist have very little in common, apart from apparently coming from the same suburb, and don't even like each other very much, but they're all disillusioned by college life and affluenza. They plan the heist by watching as many heist DVDs as they can. The young man who first comes up with the plan is a really talented artist, but feels his life needs a transformative experience in order for his art to come alive. He pitches the idea to his doobie brother, narcissistic soccer turd Warren, and once once he gets involved, he becomes the alpha, and any time one of the others thinks that they're taking this too far and want out, he either bullies them back in, or they make their consciences go away with copious weed usage. Even as things go sideways, a part of them (and all of Warren) just can't resist the need to see what's on the other side of the criminal line. Something about the young male brain compels them to put their hands on the hot stove.

The best thing about it, and it's odd to say it, is the violence. In most white-boys-get-mixed-up-in-some-hinky-shit stories, you either get the cool sanitized violence of a spy flick, or the fetishized violence of a Tarantino film. The violence in this is brief and light, but as ugly and unsettling as violence really is when perhaps-otherwise-good people are disgusted by what they are doing even as they are doing it.