I watched this the other night- it’s a crime thriller that’s based on a true story- and maybe you know by now if a movie is based on a true story- that gets my attention. While some details have been changed from the true case, the plot is true. Retired military veteran, Lance Corporal Brian Brown-Easley (the name is real), is distressed when he runs into issues with the Veterans Affairs department (VA), and he believes that they have unjustifiably stolen some of his money. At wit’s end, he decides to go into a Wells Fargo bank and take hostages and go into a standoff with police to call attention to his problem, which he believes he is not alone in dealing with. This is based on an incident back in 2017 in Cobb County, Georgia.

I won’t give any spoilers here, but if you aren’t interested in the movie, but curious what did happen, just look up his name on google, and you will find the story there. But back to the movie, Brown-Easley is played by John Boyega (who you might recognize from the Star Wars movies), and he does a superb job here playing a person who is scared, desperate, and trying to find a way out. The police negotiator who is tasked with talking him down, Eli Bernard (I don’t think this is a real name associated with the real incident but might be based on a real negotiator?), is played by Michael K Williams in what probably was one of his last movies made before his death in late 2021. The title above says 2022, but that’s when the movie came out, but I would assume it was made sometime in 2020 or 2021.

I would say that this movie is not your typical bank robbery movie (just as it was not a typical incident when it happened back in 2017), because he did not go into the bank to rob it. So, the typical bank heist movie formula goes out the window. So that makes this movie unpredictable if you don’t know anything about the real case (like I didn’t), so I had no idea what would happen. So, I was on the edge of my seat, figuratively speaking the whole movie wondering how it was going to end.

Speaking of the ending…the movie producers didn’t really have much leeway with how it ends, especially if they wanted to try to stay true to what did happen, so it happened the way it happened. I can’t say more without giving away the ending. But I will tell you, I don’t know what to think, I really don’t. If you have an opinion on the movie and or the ending- feel free to comment below- but fellow readers, if you don’t want to know, avoid viewing the comments if there are any!