Until then, fans can check out the prequel, “Army of Thieves,” dropping on Netflix today with its flurry of kinetic editing that’s designed to hide some serious pacing problems and bland characters. It’s a heist-action movie that takes forever to get going and its admittedly fun second half can’t make up for the dull set-up. Snyder stays on as a producer but hands directorial duties off to Matthias Schweighöfer, who played safecracker Dieter Ludwig in the zombie film. The wisecracking criminal was one of the highlights of Snyder’s movie, a nice balance to the more traditional alpha males played by Dave Bautista and Omari Hardwick. Having said that, a character that works as a complement to the main action of a film like “Army” doesn’t necessarily work the same way as the centerpiece. The biggest problem with "Army of Thieves" may be that it doesn’t feel like anyone except those counting Netflix’s international subscribers was asking for 130 minutes of Dieter.
“Army of Thieves” takes place six years before the action of “Army of the Dead” as the world is just starting to come to terms with the reality of a zombie outbreak—it’s mostly seen on news reports in the background and in a few of Dieter’s prophetic dreams. Dieter (known in this story as Sebastian for reasons explained later) is in the early days of safecracking expertise, and he puts together a barely-seen YouTube video about four legendary safes that were designed based on Wagner’s Ring Cycle. Remember how in “Army of the Dead” that Sebastian was excited at the prospect of cracking the famous Götterdämmerung safe in Vegas? That’s because it was really the final safe of a quartet of masterfully designed machines. One of Schweighöfer’s strengths as a director/actor is in how he captures Sebastian’s admiration for these safes. They’re not just obstacles for a criminal to conquer—he treats them like a mountain climber looking at Everest. The challenge is as exciting as the result.
After his video posts, Sebastian receives a mysterious invitation to a safe-cracking competition that’s kind of like Fight Club with less blood. He wins it, of course, proving himself to an observer named Gwendoline (Nathalie Emmanuel), who recruits him into a group of criminals that is planning to crack the other three safes before they’re retired. Once again, this is kind of a story of opportunity. The upcoming apocalypse will make this job much harder, so it’s now or never for Gwendoline, Korina (Ruby O. Fee), Rolph (Guz Khan), and Brad Cage (Stuart Martin).
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