American Heist is a low rent Canadian thriller about, you guessed it, a team of robbers teaming up to pull the ultimate in bank heists. It's an overworked genre for sure and the best this B-movie can do is add a couple of recognisable actors to the cast. Sadly, it turns out to be an absolutely brain-dead piece of entertainment thanks to the awful script, which thinks incessant profanity is a good substitute for wit and realism.Hayden Christensen, the ill-fated star of the STAR WARS prequels who quickly faded into obscurity thereafter, is the film's slightly obnoxious lead. Obscuring him at every turn is Adrien Brody, a far distance from his work in Polanski's THE PIANIST. Brody somehow gives a good performance despite his foul-mouthed and moronic dialogue, and he's one of the reasons I kept watching. The actual heist scene isn't too bad, but it's late in the day when it takes place and there's a lot of long-winded relationship stuff and melodrama to get through before that point.

At least I had Star Wars ... or The Pianist. Depending which actor might have thoughts about his career, the answers are there. Hayden hit the Jackpot (I hope for him) with the Star Wars franchise and Adrien Brody had his critical success with Polanski. The latter seems to be doing a neat movie from time to time, though he also seems to be doing some very bad ones too.This isn't a really bad one, though you wonder about the characters and how Mr. Brody came to play a character like this. I guess it had to do with the family business in the script and a scene where he can "shine" if you want to call it that. It's really rather annoying not to mention predictable.

Most of the reviews on this film are from people that want super fast cars and explosions with super intelligent heist tactics. This is not that film. But it is not a bad film.Not a bad movie at all. I really liked it. If you want a super high budget blockbuster, this is not your movie. If you want to feel the characters and understand their pain, and you can watch slow movies a gain something from them, I recommend this movie. It is definitely a B film, but both of the characters are good actors. You really feel what they are experiencing and what they have been through. I do not regret watching this film at all. But I can enjoy a good film, and I can understand the slower films.

Generic plot line and characters, it starts out fairly watchable but then just descends into an absolutely awful movie, not only is the script generic and badly written, but the movie glorifies violence as usual, and perpetuates the African-American stereotype on screen - in the final scene, all the cops and snipers are white and the two criminals are black (typical), the other two brothers played by Hayden Christensen and Adrian Brody are obviously portrayed as heroes. I'm really surprised any of the actors agreed to do this movie because they're all talented, as I'm sure the director is. Easy paycheck I guess. How do movies like this get made? Complete trash.