Amazon MGMStories about social media just don’t work on-screen. Trends move too fast; slang can change on a dime. What was cool two days ago might not be worth talking about once it’s been reamed through the news cycle. It’s a medium that demands total, abject sincerity — that, or the Looney Tunes nihilism affectionately known as “brainrot.” The only thing harder to commit to the silver screen might be an earnest socioeconomic revolution — which is why it’s so funny that David Leitch, of all directors, is brave enough to splice both in his latest film.Leitch isn’t particularly known for sincerity or whimsy. Though his oeuvre does run on a cocktail of vacant bro humor, he also makes the kind of film you’d throw on with your dad on a lazy afternoon and forget about hours later. Perhaps that’s why he was Amazon’s ideal pick to spin a yarn that not only acknowledges the uncrossable wealth gap perpetuated by Big Business, but also teaches its audience how to ease their financial strife by robbing banks. It’s a little like Set It Off funneled through a Twitch stream… if said stream was based on a 50-year-old’s approximation of funny internet humor. It’s clearly keen to break the tried-and-true mold of the heist genre, and maybe a few brains in the process, but How to Rob a Bank leans so far into farce it ultimately says nothing at all about our digital doom.A gang of content creators and parkour savants led by Nicholas Hoult at his hottest (and perhaps his most blasé?) lead the charge in Leitch’s latest. Poppy, punchy infographics and a steady drip of snark tell most of us what we already know about the state of our nation, but with an actionable twist. “You’re more likely to live your entire life below the poverty line than to get caught stealing to get out from under it,” Hoult’s ringleader, Ryan, tells his hundreds of millions of followers — then proceeds to show them how to change their fate. Buy this face covering on Etsy. Scan this QR code to find a gun shop in your area. Here’s how to build a fake bomb to distract the cops and make the bank-robbing all the easier. Oh, and if you’re somehow still caught, say only this: “I want my lawyer.”It’s a radical, even dangerous concept for a mainstream film to embrace in such detail, but it’s immediately defanged by a script from Mark Bianculli. Any heist film worth its salt has something up its sleeve: sometimes it’s not about the money at all. Sometimes — actually, most of the time — it’s a smokescreen through which our heroes pilfer something else, be it revenge or renown. How to Rob a Bank is well aware of the rules and tropes that define the genre, and seems to equate inflated explanation with a kind of subversion.A compelling cat-and-mouse game gets lost in a muddled heist. | Amazon MGMThis is a film for the TikTok-pilled, alright, but perhaps not in the way Leitch or Bianculli wanted it to be. Whenever it does want you to actually pay attention, it cherry-picks a needle drop from a viral clip — sometimes twice over. (Hope you still like that viral Billie Eilish song!) Our story might mimic the rapid clip and wildly oscillating tone of a doomscroll, but it delivers its plot on a silver platter, just in case you are scrolling through info-heavy scenes. As the Wolf Gang evades the FBI, the curmudgeonly Agent West (John C. Reilly) holds our hand through every bit of pertinent exposition. In one brisk lore dump, he tells us how many felonies the team has successfully pulled off and how embarrassing it all is for the Bureau. In another, he’s delivering tragic backstories for every member of Ryan’s crew, taking what little mystique surrounded their murky motivations.The latter marks the film’s halfway point, and is essentially a “Here, damn” after an hour of nothingburger team-building. Though we do eventually learn why Ryan and his college sweetheart Emi (a ridiculously underused Anna Sawai) rounded up their crew in the first place — or why their resident munitions expert, Vince (Pete Davidson at his most compelling), is risking his life with a wife and daughter at home — it’s just as hard to connect to them as it is to the NPCs taking up their crusade across the nation. How to Rob a Bank wants to imbue our heroes with a mythic status, but the logic in their plan requires more than aura and anger. By the time this tale launches into an indictment of predatory banks run by suits like Mr. Walton (Christian Slater), the specifics don’t even matter. That the Wolf Gang’s streams could somehow turn law enforcement and bank guards into stans overnight is another farcical touch this story plays absolutely straight, undermining the great arguments Ryan actually makes about common ground and capitalist greed.How to Rob a Bank feels too farcical to actually make a difference — and perhaps that’s the point. | Amazon MGMUsing hot people to make a point is textbook Leitch, maybe even more than his calling card as a stuntman-turned-director. And it will work for somebody here: you want these crazy kids to make it out alive, not so much because their plight is so relatable, even if it is, but because they’re hot and tattooed and sad and angry. (Do I finally get the Davidson hype?) It’s Zoë Kravitz — putting her High Fidelity schtick to good use as a home-arrested hacker turned FBI helper — who makes the best possible case for slow, steady radicalization. Her Reagan Gardner feels like a transplant from a better, gutsier film: the Gen-Z successor to Heat this story could have been. She’s tasked with tracking down the Wolf Gang alongside West, but mostly serves as the still-small voice reminding him (and the audience) that cops are more likely to mow down civilians than maintain the “law and order” our G-man is so fond of.Kravitz’s chemistry with Reilly grounds this fairy tale when it needs it most. Her peanut-gallery jabs at the system chip away at the film’s splashy, vacuous tone, invoking the steely spirit of its Pittsburgh setting better than anyone else in the main crew. In the end, though, it’s got no more staying power than the BLM stickers peeling off Reagan’s laptop: it’s set dressing rather than an actual conversation starter. How to Rob a Bank is neither all that deep, that righteously angry, nor that raucous. It gets some points for cashing in on the attention economy, but it eventually goes the way of all Leitch’s films, taking a fascinating world and flattening it for an audience that might not even be watching.How to Rob a Bank opens in theaters on November 13.