Review of Band of Robbers (2016) by Jake C — 10 Jul 2018

There are some clever conceits buoying up the film, and a whole host of terrific performances that make it worth watching, but too often the execution falls flat, the underlying premise-Tom Sawyer as a young millennial adult in the contemporary South-never quite clicking with its beloved source material.

Tom and Huck, when grown up and updated, no longer feel like a pair of mischievous rapscallions, but a couple of overgrown assholes who wreak destruction not only in their own lives, but those of total and innocent strangers.

Tom is still affable and charming, but unlike the book, which is told through Huck's eyes-not just his voice, not just through colorful narration, but via the unreliability of Huck's own subjective experience-the film never sinks deeply enough into Huck's perspective to overlook Tom's tomfoolery for what it is: Opportunistic hornswoggle.