It’s a weird project that would have been better served by either being longer in order to dig into its many connecting strands or shorter in order to focus more. It’s almost hyperactive in its focus, especially as it tries to become an art history doc and a detailed look at the Boston mob in later episodes. The problem here is that not only is Colin Barnicle’s series formally stale but it never quite figures out what story to tell. One hopes for something that would break the form a bit, and some of the more interesting Netflix original crime series have done exactly that. The truth is that these series are starting to become numbingly familiar, almost as predictable as something like “Dateline NBC” in their obvious presentations. “This is a Robbery: The World’s Biggest Art Heist” unfolds over four episodes and follows what is now a traditional Netflix crime structure of talking heads, archival footage, and re-creations-drone shots are a plus too. It’s a fascinating case, which means that the recent wave of Netflix true crime docuseries had to get to it eventually. How is that possible? The truth is that the crime was daring, but the real story is how it’s remained unsolved. While recent developments have led to some pretty intense suspects, no one has ever been charged with the crime and the art has not been recovered even though a $10 million reward remains unclaimed. At the time, the haul-which included original works by Vermeer, Manet, and Rembrandt-was valued at $500 million, making it the biggest in history. Two men posing as police officers entered the building, tied up the security guards, and spent the next 81 minutes (a long time for any sort of robbery, perhaps indicating a degree of safety they felt in the building) cutting out famous works of art from their frames, rolling them up, and disappearing into the night. There’s enough raw talent on display here that I’m looking forward to his next picture nevertheless.On March 18 th, 1990, a small but beautiful building in Boston called the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum was robbed. Nevertheless, Raboy manages to pull off several galvanic cinematic effects even as his scenario yields little more than exasperation. Marshall) as Charlotte’s father, an officer of the law who mainly sits in shadows and mopes, is ineffectual on purpose, I suppose, but his inertia is so overstated it’s almost funny, and not in a good way. When Joe speaks of enduring “all this heat, all this sweat, all this pain, until we melt together again,” I was suddenly reminded of the old Monty Python sketch in which Terry Gilliam’s military lawyer stands and exclaims, “Sorry but my client has become pretentious!”Īnd the film’s temporal distortions and off-ramps at first seem to dilute and diffuse the movie’s serial-killer storyline, until one realizes that it’s actually just disguising the fact that the storyline doesn’t have much there there to begin with. The movie is suffused with enigmatic touches like this, but Raboy, as he increasingly uses voiceover in a way that’s very much Malick, can lose hold of the distinction between mystery and affectation. They’re driving around now in Joe’s pickup, enveloped in darkness. “That was the most painful week of my life,” Charlotte says, in protest. After Charlotte tells him “You’re back from the dead,” he asks her if she has, of late, heard a thumping sound, one familiar to them both from the bad time. He has not been around since Charlotte’s mother’s suicide. To make matters weirder, suddenly Charlotte’s former boyfriend, Joe ( Ben Schnetzer) turns up. Still later there’s word of the murder of a girl Charlotte just saw at a diner. Later on in the sweaty night there’s word of a young woman’s murder in a nearby town. At the swimming site their guy pals tease them-one actually threatens Charlotte with a lit firework to convince her to get in the water-and what seems like sophomoric hijinks carries real menace with it. Prior to the swim, Charlotte ( Odessa Young) is caught in a dream that’s also a memory, of her mother’s suicide a year before.
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