Jingle Bell Heist: Santa vs. The Security State
I would be so bad at crime. When confronted with authority, I have a terrible habit of telling the absolute truth. That got me locked in my cabin for 24 hours of my first cruise because I admitted that I had felt nauseous earlier in the day during a very turbulent flight. It got me a ticket years later when I admitted that, oh yeah, I totally did know that my rear tail light was out but I haven't fixed it. It never even occurs to me to lie about things until it's too late. So while I've got decent heist planning skills and an eye for weaknesses, I've long since decided that a life of crime is not in the cards for me. I think that the protagonists of Jingle Bell Heist could use some similar self-reflection, given how absolutely disastrous they are at crime.
Sophia (Olivia Holt) is drowning in debt, working two jobs to pay for her mother's medical care and exorbitant London rent. One of her jobs is at Sterling's, a high-end department store with a confusingly large staff run by Maxwell Sterling (Peter Serafinowitz), a textbook snooty British guy. Early on in the movie, she makes a very clever play to make her way into the basement of Sterling's, where I presumed she was going to gather some sort of secret information that would justify all the work she had done to get in there. But no, she just straight up steals £150 like a dummy. If you are going to steal from your workplace, at least make it worth it.
Nick (Connor Swindells) catches her on video (seriously, duh), but Nick isn't part of the security team--he's a disgruntled security tech who went to jail for stealing from Sterling's and is determined to get his revenge. He and Sophia cook up a plan to steal a bunch of jewels from the basement. It's a bad plan and they totally would have been caught on camera, but it doesn't matter because the jewels have already been stolen. Sophia's security guard buddy gets fired since it happened on his watch.
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This is probably the point where Nick and Sophia should just admit that they aren't very good at this whole "breaking the law" thing and they should probably stop. Instead, they come up with a series of very bad plans to get into Maxwell Sterling's office safe, which is rumored to hold £500,000 in cash. At some point, they stop heist planning and start pining for each other. Finally, after yet another one of their terrible plans accidentally succeeds, they end up executing the robbery on Christmas Eve. In the real world, Nick and Sophia would 100% have been immediately arrested and gone to jail, but since this is a Christmas movie everything is wrapped up neatly at the end.
I really wanted to like this one because I love the idea of a Christmas heist. The Santa outfits provide a perfect way to cover up your tactical gear and have 3/4 of your face covered. You get to carry a sack as part of the costume! I could have gotten over the bad heisting if the romance was charming, but unfortunately Holt and Swindells acted more like brother and sister than romantic interests.
The movie looks good and is suitably festive, and if you don't care as much as I do about effective heist planning you might enjoy this one. But I spent the whole time thinking about how I would plan these crimes so much better. Maybe I should reconsider my blanket ban on illegal activity?
Wait. I probably shouldn't have said that. Forget I said that, okay?