While it might not seem like it on the face of it, pulling off a successful heist series is about as complex as pulling off that heist in real life. You have to have compelling characters on each side of the story – we have to want to watch the criminal masterminds work and we should want to follow the law or marks as they try to foil those attempting to rob them. You can’t have idiots on either end of things because then the heist either feels too easy – if you’re robbing folks who can’t protect themselves, there’s no challenge, and if the criminals are idiots, well, how are we expected to believe they could do what they’re doing? Something like the George Clooney Ocean’s Eleven hits the sweet spot – fun, interesting characters pulling off the heist, and Andy Garcia’s casino owner isn’t a push-over, even if we’re meant to be rooting against him the whole way. Which brings us to 12 12 12, the new AppleTV heist series with an interesting concept that doesn’t quite work the way I suspect the creators were hoping it would.
According to the voice over (from Anthony Mackie, who plays Jack Strickland, our law enforcement agent attempting to catch our criminals) that opens every episode of the series, there are three stages to every heist: the 12 months it takes, on average, to plan the heist, the 12 hours it takes to execute the heist, and the 12 days following it that the law has to catch the criminals. If they’re not caught within those 12 days, statistically, they won’t ever be caught. So, each episode offers us three separate story threads (marked with a note to let us know just where we are in the story).* We spend time watching the team plan the heist (aka getting the gang together). We spend time watching them execute the heist. And we watch them as they try to escape with their money. Through it all, we follow Strickland – who has been tipped off by someone in the team that the heist is happening – as he and his local Swiss counterpart, Lena (Sallie Harmsen), try to stop and then catch the crew. Sounds like a cool way to break down a bank heist, right?
*The major flaw in this structure? We have twelve distinct phases of story to tell, yet the series is only eight episodes long. If your show is centered on such a clear concept (12-12-12), why in the world aren’t there twelve episodes?
Well, here’s the thing about stories that jump around in a timeline: When you know what’s going to happen in the present day – such as who is alive, who is mad at whom, and who might not be trustworthy – it takes away all of the stakes in the past sequences. For example, when we know that in the present day, certain characters are perfectly fine, there’s no sense of urgency or fear when an episode ends with a couple of them caught in a major explosion. When we know that a mode of transport will be used to get people out of the bank, there’s no sense of worry when we learn down the line that the team were scared that the mode of transport was going to crash before it arrived. When a character gets arrested in the past and yet is alive and well and on the run in the present, why should we worry that they’re out of commission for a chunk of the heist? Sure, it’s cool to watch them plan and execute the heist – slowly, over the course of the entire season – but we know the ultimate outcome. So, after a couple of episodes, all that matters within those scenes are the interpersonal relationships between the characters. And, unfortunately, these are a bunch of thinly drawn, disappointingly acted roles that can’t carry the story.
It’s not that the cast isn’t talented – they are. In addition to Mackie, Jamie Dornan (complete with a suspect American accent that wants to be a New York accent but never quite stays the same) is our lead robber, Paul Galvin. He’s pulled back into a life of crime by his na’er do well brother, Bobby (Jack Kesy, shaky as a wholly odious character). All he wants to do is live in Marseilles with his pregnant girlfriend and help out her father with his hotel. But all three end up joining the heist under threat from the big boss who makes them an offer they literally can’t refuse. Of course, the Galvin brothers have old beef with Agent Strickland from an old heist gone wrong in Newark – something that constantly comes up over the early episodes with only a few breadcrumbs as to what it all means. The brothers put together a crack team of specialists to execute a heist on a Swiss bank, taking the money of a Russian Oligarch. Not the smartest move, and setting up a showdown not only with the authorities but also with the Russian mob. Again, the present day side of the story is the only piece that actually has stakes, but when that’s only 1/3 of a given episode, well, it’s not particularly fun to slog through the rest to get to the meat of the story.
Each of these central characters is a walking trope. Our contortionist? He hates being stuck in one place for a long period of time. Bobby is a hot-head who thinks he’s charming. Kali Reis (who was so great in the last season of True Detective) gets to be the only adult in the room most of the time – which is especially frustrating seeing as she’s the only person of color in the whole heist team. Paul is the criminal who really just wants out, but can’t leave his brother to get burned. And Strickland is the cop with deep trauma from his last case who thinks if he finally puts away his white whale he’ll be able to rest. None of these characters ever get to move beyond their basic outlines, and the actors never get the chance to really let loose either. Everything feels so buttoned down and paint by numbers that it’s frustrating to watch.
There’s a show here where we get to know these characters, learn their complexities, see something more about them than their role in the heist and their desire for financial freedom, which lets us root for them. As it is, I found myself not particularly intrigued by either side of the tale – I didn’t care if the agents caught the criminals and didn’t particularly care if the heist crew made it out in one piece. Paul isn’t charming or interesting enough to make us root for him and Dornan’s performance is surprisingly flat and uninspired throughout. And Strickland isn’t anything special – just your typical cop who wants to get revenge for something that happened in the past. And Mackie is just as dull and flat as Dornan. It’s a waste of two solid actors in thankless roles. There are a host of better heist options out there if you’re trying to scratch that particular itch. Heck, the 2023 Disney+ heist series Culprits was significantly better than this and it wasn’t particularly good. So, skip 12 12 12.
12 12 12 premieres on AppleTV on November 13. All eight episodes were provided for review.
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