How to Rob a Bank asks whether a motive can ever justify a crime

David Leitch’s heist thriller How to Rob a Bank sets out its to critique from its opening moments: in a world this socially and economically unequal, can the right motive make a crime OK?

The story follows a crew of social media-savvy bank robbers, Ringleader (Nicolas Hoult), Getaway Driver (Anna Sawai), Muscle (Pete Davidson) and Tech-guru (Rhenzy Feliz), who broadcast their raids and soon find the police chasing them. Every time the robbers commit a crime, they post about it. The public soon joins in, posting footage of crimes of their own. The robbery becomes almost secondary to the crew – the audience engagement and consumption of the content is their real prize.

So why are they doing this?

The robbers have each experienced hardship, from insurmountable healthcare costs and predatory banks to immigration enforcement. By robbing from the corrupt they are trying to level the playing field. Their “how to” videos intend to empower the downtrodden.

The robbers justify their actions through arguments about inequality, which the film treats as both a genuine grievance and an excuse. Throughout their videos, the crew quote statistics arguing that the bankers are the real criminals, the ones taking advantage of ordinary people.

This reflects strain theory, first set out by sociologist Robert Merton in 1938. It argues that crime becomes more likely when society promotes goals such as wealth while denying many people legitimate means of reaching them. Debt and capitalism sit in the background of the film as exactly that kind of system, and the film points at how debt is created and who profits from it.

The robbers are against those profiteers and attest to be firmly on the side of the people. For instance, in one video, the robbers coach viewers, telling them not to talk to the police when arrested and reminding them of their right to a lawyer. They note that the United States Supreme Court has held that officers can use deception to secure convictions.

Despite all this, How to Rob a Bank is wary of its “heroes”.

Convenient excuses

The criminals donate money to charities from the banks they rob, yet keep the lion’s share for themselves. In one heist, the crew hand out free iPads to the gathered masses, a distraction that doubles as a demonstration: the crowd scrambling for free devices is as hungry as the robbers.

Criminologists like Ray Surette have a name for this: performance crime. These are offences created for distribution on social media, performed for an audience rather than hidden from it. They are conducted for fame, notoriety and attention.

Despite increasing their personal wealth, the crew in How to Rob A Bank convince themselves that they are helping people. Sociologists Gresham Sykes and David Matza called such justifications techniques of neutralisation: the excuses offenders use to quiet their own moral code, from denying that anyone is really a victim to appealing to a higher loyalty. Generosity, like the iPads, becomes branding.

After all those murky motives, the film’s answer for what the best motive could be for committing a crime is disarmingly simple: love. Not ideology, not justice, but the people the robbers cannot bear to lose. However, love here works as a moat, not a bridge: it protects the robbers’ own and leaves everyone else outside.

Canadian-American psychologist Paul Bloom puts it more vividly, describing empathy as a spotlight that shines brightly on those we love and dims for everyone else. As a response to inequality, it shelters the few, not the many.

With a crowded crew to serve, the film hands each robber a motive and moves on, sketching where it should scrutinise. That leaves its case for love resting on people the audience barely knows: mouthpieces for social commentary rather than flesh-and-blood.

To be fair, this is a heist action film first and foremost. As film scholar Daryl Lee shows, the heist genre has always smuggled an anti-institutional message inside its capers – but the message rarely outweighs the thrill of the job. How to Rob a Bank was never going to dismantle capitalism between set pieces. Instead, it raises the big questions, then hands the homework to the audience.