Director Steven C Miller creates a top-notch suspense thriller – Marauders (2016) – that moves fast through the city of Cincinnati in Ohio, USA. With a conspiracy looming over a banker’s family fortune, FBI Agent Montgomery and his team try and track a deadly gang of four that target the Hubert Banks making robberies from three of their branches. When Agent Montgomery unearths and digs through the investigation, he is haunted by the memory of his wife, a fellow police agent who was killed on duty.
Montgomery, a jarhead FBI agent, has an enemy within his ranks. Cincinnati Police Department always cowers when Montgomery walks through the door. Within the CPD, Officer Mims remains the primary nemesis to Montgomery after the history they shared involving the murder of Montgomery’s wife.
Mims has a dark past to overcome to support his wife, Vanessa, who suffers from stage 4 cancer. When Mims’s cash-hungry past returns to haunt him, he forces an end to a scheme he put in play that backfires, leaving Montgomery with a chance to avenge his wife. In this article, we attempt to understand what Montgomery and his team do to create an unlikely alliance with a Special Forces agent to avenge each other’s enemies.
Marauders (2016) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
Military Vigilantes, A Jarhead FBI Agent, and a Crooked Banker
The Hubert National Bank faces a robbery by a couple of heavily armed men. They move swiftly through the bank, and in 20 mins, they steal approximately 3 million dollars in cash and leave a bank manager dead. But it does not stop there. They hit two other banks. While the FBI is close on their tail, these bank robbers call themselves the Cincinnati Robin Hoods, who work closely to visit each branch of the Hubert Bank to uncover a conspiracy that had put a target on their backs in the recent past. One from the group is desperately cash-hungry and tries to oust the leader. The leader knows that one is betraying him and stays ahead of the game to secure the money for a better purpose.
Agent Montgomery and his team- Agent Wells, a new addition from Special Forces, Agent Stockwell, and Agent Chase do everything in their power to hunt these bank robbers. As they maneuver, losing empirical evidence to Officer Mims at the first crime scene, Montgomery, with his sharp eye for detail, sniffs like a bloodhound around the Cincinnati Police Department to find Agent Mims has found a name of a potential suspect.
Agent Stockwell provides a brotherly foundation for Montgomery and vice versa. Montgomery has a bitter memory of his wife being murdered by the head of a cartel who found out she was an informant and tortured her to death. With the love of his life gone, he has a seething score to settle with Velasquez, the leader of that cartel, and a never-ending feeling of betrayal for Mims, who lied about Velasquez, which allowed Velasquez to roam free with Mims being bought off by Velasquez’s drug money.
Agent Wells is working both sides of the law and playing a dangerous game where he is in over his head. With Mim’s wife fighting cancer, his inhibitions catch up with him and force him to question everything he has put in play to secure a certain amount of money from TJ’s brother Jackson’s drug money. Mims works with Agent Wells to track down TJ Jackson, whose prints were on the bullet at the scene of the first bank robbery. Working in the shadows, Mims and Wells privately track the money (from the first heist) via Well’s tip-off. When Mims lies to Wells, Wells counters by having a certain amount of that money disappear and having the rest of the group arrested.
Marauders (2016) Movie Ending, Explained
How does Montgomery find the Banker?
A couple of years ago, Alexander Hubert, whose family owned the Hubert National Bank, stood to inherit a large amount of wealth the day he turned 25. He was a philosophy major and leftist in political beliefs. He wrote a paper describing the evils of corruption within the government, bankers, and their policies. However, two months before his 25th birthday, he was kidnapped and killed. The operation was led by T.J Jackson, an Ex-Army Ranger. Later, his team was executed by a military group and TJ. Jackson was claimed dead, but his body was never found. His wife Martha, an incredible jazz singer, buried all memory of his life in an empty casket. Somehow the fingerprints on the bullets recovered from each scene from the three robberies have his prints on them, almost hinting at something.
Senator Cook is a close ally to Hubert Sr. Prior to becoming Senator, and Cook was in the army. His platoon was responsible for hiring a military group for the kidnapping and killing of Hubert Jr. With certain photographs displaying Senator Cook’s homosexual tendencies and other revealing documents of deep-seated corruption, Hubert Sr stores these documents in a safety deposit box at a particular branch under a fictional name from H.P Lovecraft’s book. When these documents are leaked to the press by Agent Wells, Hubert Sr panics and makes large monetary withdrawals to get ready to escape. This would act as leverage over Senator Cook and avail of his resources when the time calls for it.
Montgomery brings the war to Jeffery Hubert Sr when he discovers he is behind the conspiracy of killing his younger brother (20 years apart in age) and running many operations deeply rooted in corruption with certain controversies surrounding the matters. He decides to temporarily detain Hubert Sr claiming him to be a witness in a robbery. The bank robbers strategically follow a route by robbing specific material and dropping it anonymously by Montgomery.
At present moment, the bank robbers return, and there is a gunfight after Montgomery spots them first. With dead bodies collapsing by the minute and bullets flying, everything comes to a standstill when Montgomery has their leader at gunpoint. He slowly releases them and lets them take the money. Meanwhile, Wells and Mims work together to find out where TJ Jackson is currently located. With an ounce of doubt that he is still alive, no one can prove it yet. They visit Martha after seeing TJ’s younger brother visit her. When they find a wad of cash, they know he is alive.
Montgomery’s special eye for detail does not betray him when he lets a personal detail be known to Agent Wells, who tells him that focusing on the greater good is what is important. His idea of the greater good is Hubert Sr. Montgomery sorely disagrees with him, but in his mind, a red light goes off. Wells is focused on TJ’s brother, who is guarding the money. We suddenly find Wells is working with Mims and his two associates from Cincinnati Police Department, who are watching him from the car outside. When Mims does not tell Wells where they have the money stashed from the third heist but is following Jackson (based on a fake lead from a ‘security guard’), Mims thinks he has it in the bag and has control over the plan. However, he was never in charge.
Jackson tips the Police that the Hubert National Bank robbers are sitting outside his shop. Meanwhile, Montgomery has found TJ listening to his girlfriend sing at the Jazz joint. He takes him in for questioning and finds out the truth. TJ tells him the group’s leader saved his life and killed his team ‘by order from his Commanding Officer’ just like TJ and his team. They learned their respective Commanding Officers had betrayed them.
When Stockwell finds a helipad about to take off with Hubert Sr on it, he moves quickly to the location with Wells. When they reach the helipad, they realize they are too late, and the helicopter has taken off with Hubert Sr on it. Wells keeps shooting at the copter, hoping to bring it down, and Stockwell stops him. Meanwhile, Mims meets with Montgomery when CPD tells him they have the robbers in custody. (Only two of them). Mims then informs Montgomery that he knows where they were taken from because Wells had a lead about where Jackson may have gone with the money.
Mims approaches Wells the same night and requests that Wells return the money to clear his reputation. Wells refuses, and Mims keeps poking the bear to get shot in his throat and finally dies. Montgomery finds out that Hubert Sr is in Mexico and takes a flight out. He meets with Wells sitting at a table close to Hubert Sr (who is unaware of their presence). Now that Wells’ cover is blown and Hubert Sr has escaped, Montgomery puts a trace on him.
He tells Wells that Velasquez was killed in prison with his eyes gouged out of their sockets (the same way Velasquez killed Montgomery’s wife when her cover was blown). While Montgomery knows he is in Wells’s debt, he tells him that he was betrayed once and he will trust him only one more time.
Montgomery moves over to Hubert’s table and orders two glasses of Pinot Noir. While Hubert Sr always made fun of the fact that Montgomery never drank that glass of wine (because he was supposed to share a glass with his wife), this time, Montgomery drinks a sip and feels a rush of power. He moves quickly and stabs Hubert Sr in the gut. Hubert Sr’s guard raises his gun, and at the same moment, Wells pulls out his weapon and shoots the guard dead. With the score settled, everyone goes home happy and content.
Final Thoughts:
Director Steven C Miller brings an action-packed thriller with a powerful contemporary Robin-Hood narrative that is gripping to the end with dialogues that seem rather sheepish but deliver the punch only by a jarhead FBI agent. The film is a perfect blend of action, story, plot, characters, and suspense. Every act is perfectly placed. We stay gripped to the screen till the end. High recommended as a watch.
