Matthias Schweighöfer’s Army of Thieves Replaces Zombie Chaos with Deep-Rooted Joy
Army of the Dead is a film full of pleasant surprises, but Matthias Schweighöfer, playing a German safecracker with a hair-trigger for impassioned speeches about locks and bolts, is perhaps the most pleasant surprise of them all. The man has a twitchy sort of charm easily misidentified as “quirkiness.” In reality he’s well-mannered to a fault and polite to the point of timidity, but with one other propulsive quality buried beneath the affable veneer: Intensity. Everything Schweighöfer does in Army of the Dead is informed by a vigor belied by his nervousness. He’s a squirrely burglar, quivering one moment over flesh-eating ghouls and doing a heroic sacrifice the next.
This intensity carries over into Army of Thieves, the prequel film to Army of the Dead, where Schweighöfer replaces Zack Snyder in the director’s chair. To allay any fears that Schweighöfer might copy Snyder’s style, don’t worry: Schweighöfer is not Zack Snyder, because nobody is. Everything that singled out Schweighöfer’s work under Snyder’s guidance is infused into Army of Thieves on a molecular level, as if he managed to get his hands on Shay Hatten’s screenplay and bleed all over its pages. Army of Thieves replaces the doom, gloom and zombie chaos with deep-rooted joy, as if Schweighöfer, behind the camera, can scarcely believe he’s directing a film this big established by a filmmaker like Snyder.
It’s impossible to resist that sort of bubbly, crackling enthusiasm, which makes Army of Thieves’ predictable elements easier to countenance. In fact, Schweighöfer makes us look forward to the predictability the way sports fans wait in trembling, eager anticipation of a home run or touchdown: You want it to happen, you’re waiting for it to happen, and if it doesn’t happen then why did you even bother getting out of bed today? Army of Thieves is many things, but it’s rarely if ever a disappointment. It certainly isn’t boring.
Schweighöfer once again plays Ludwig Dieter, safecracker extraordinaire and veteran nerd, except now he goes by Sebastian. Ludwig Dieter is a chosen name. (You may want an explanation. The movie provides.) Living an ordinary life in Berlin, where he works a thankless job being abused by angry customers at a bank, taking his lunch breaks all by his lonesome, Sebastian perks himself up testing his mettle in daily speed safecracking challenges and by uploading videos on the ins, outs and history of safecracking online. Granted, he has a viewership of nobody, but zero viewership is enough to attract the eye of Gwendoline (Nathalie Emmanuel), a career bank robber who wants his help opening a series of vaults designed by near-mythical safe designer Hans Wagner.
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