LARCENY (2017) **

I was a fan of director R. Ellis Frazier’s Rumble, so I decided to take a chance on his latest film, Larceny.  Like Rumble, it is a competently made picture.  Since it doesn’t have the same kind of bonkers twist ending, it’s kind of a forgettable affair. 

Dolph Lundgren stars as an ex-DEA agent who gets himself thrown in jail down in Mexico.  That might sound like a dumb thing for a gringo to do, but Dolph has a plan.  He knows that’s where a big drug dealer keeps all his money and Dolph and his team are planning to take it off his hands.

Larceny is a heist film, so those expecting your typical Lundgren shoot ‘em up may be a little disappointed.  The pacing is also a bit slow and nothing much happens during the middle section.  Frazier fails to get any mileage out of the admittedly novel setting.  It’s a shame too because combining the heist and prison genres seemed like a good idea.

It’s one thing for a movie to be low on action.  It’s another thing to set up a big action sequence and not deliver.  In order to make his escape, Dolph lets the prisoners loose to create a distraction.  Everything looks like it’s leading up to a big shootout, only Frazier cuts to black and flash-forwards to Dolph’s girlfriend being kidnapped after the heist.  It happens so abruptly that it made me think that the production simply ran out of money and couldn't afford to film the sequence.

Dolph is his usual charismatic self.  We also get solid support from Corbin Bernsen as Dolph's boss and Louis Mandylor as a crooked senator.  Jocelyn Osorio also does a fine job as the lone woman on Dolph’s team.  She proves she’s just as capable as the boys and holds her own in her dramatic scenes.  I wouldn’t mind seeing her in her own starring vehicle.

AKA:  Maximum Security.