Finding Steve McQueen
A forgettable heist film - 4/10
by The Movie Inspector
A tedious thriller, Finding Steve McQueen is a heist film that tells the story of the greatest heist in US history in quite a sloppy manner. The issue being that it has no idea in what direction it wishes to stir the story despite an intriguing premise.
First of all to avoid any confusion, this movie has no connection to the life of actor Steve McQueen but rather a character in the movie identifies with McQueen’s persona. As to why the movie has such a title, well that’s just a cheap move to sell some tickets. Anyhow, this movie is based on a true story and clearly had an interesting plot and characters yet was handled so poorly that it couldn’t highlight any of that. ‘Finding Steve McQueen’ follows a gang of thieves who attempt to steal illegal contributions and blackmail money from President Nixon’s secret fund in 1972.
What kicks off as a clear and focused movie quickly turns messy as the narrative pulls its characters in completely different directions. The structure was simply awful, and the decision to relay the story through a non-linear narrative didn’t help that whatsoever but instead created lots of unnecessary confusion. I really had a difficult time understanding the motivations of the characters to even care about them. Lots of things remained unclear towards the end and that proves just how poor the execution was. It wastes almost all the talent it had to work with because most characters are terribly two dimensional.
Every time the movie would present something interesting it would go ahead and follow it up with something ridiculous. I would say the best aspect of this movie is the inclusion of a few good soundtrack choices. The poor script and underwhelming performances constantly made me roll my eyes but here’s the thing I didn’t feel terribly bored. It still manages to be somewhat intriguing despite its numerous flaws. I must also mention that editing as that was truly laughable. At the end of the day, this film wasted its potential and is unfortunately nothing more than forgettable.
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