Heist movies are a dime for a dozen these days. Every third film that comes down knocking on the doors of the OTT sphere is a heist movie trying to act all cool and savvy. With that in mind, TJ Noel-Sullivan’s debut feature film “Midas” comes with modest ambitions. It is aware that it doesn’t want to be the kind of heist movie that has to be 2 steps ahead of its audience. As Ricky (Laquan Copeland), the protagonist of the film, often ‘improvises’ while the heist is still going down, you do not expect it to be intelligent about how it gets you to the finish. However, even with modesty in consideration, the film could have dug deeper into its core idea of what Big Pharma is doing to the less fortunate.
Ricky is one of them. When we first meet him, he is out delivering food orders while promoting his mother’s own cloud kitchen thing illegally on the side. His mother is sick, and we can see that he is tired of doing what he is doing but keeps going because he has to. When he’s not out delivering, he often hangs out with his two close friends, Sunita (Preet Kaur) and Victor (Federico Parra). One day, they invite him to a mixer where he has the chance to meet Claire Brent (Lucy), a friend of theirs who he could potentially date. Reluctantly, he goes there and somehow, due to a stroke of luck, ends up getting a job at George Brent’s (Claire’s father, played by Bob Gallagher) healthcare insurance company, Midas.
Now, George assumes that Ricky is from Harvard, so he lets him work in the insurance claims department that his nephew Tom (Erik Bloomquist) oversees. However, keeping up with lying, dating Claire on the side, and seeing a more qualified Sunita working in the mailing department while also knowing that his mother, who used to work at Midas before getting fired and rejected from insurance claims, adds up to the anxiety of him leading everyone on.
So, after working a few weeks in the office, Ricky stumbles on the fraudulent nature of the work that goes into Midas’ claims, and since his sick mother would need urgent surgery, he decides to take up insurance fraud head-on. He teams up with Sunita and Victor, who are also desperate to make a little money without the fear of getting caught, to pull off a mini heist. However, when they are done with the heist, they realize that there is something evil going on in the crux of Midas’s insurance claims and the companies’ sinister ways of allowing those claims.
Now, this is where the three find their moral standpoint being questioned. Is stealing from the rich righteous? Does it make it less of a crime when you do it to the ones who deserve it? Is it okay to not let the evil be held accountable for what it has done to everyone if it comes with personal gains? These are some questions that Midas has on its mind but never truly gets to question or handle in a way that would make it memorable. While the film is light and harmless, I can see the potential in what debutant director TJ Noel-Sullivan is aiming for. However, the movie only scratches the surface due to a half-baked script. There’s a sense of unachieved momentum, as it doesn’t fully reach its potential.
There’s a critic about Big Pharma somewhere in the middle of the two amateur heists that these young people pull, but since the story is so busy making up things as it goes along, this Gen-Z version of corporate fraud is not able to dig deeper. The characters also feel pretty listless, with little to no value placed on their motivations and anger toward the line between the privileged and the less fortunate.
The third act twist comes off as heavy-handed when the initial setup paints the rich as dumb and oblivious. Additionally, most of what transpires here feels implausible and too easy to be carried off by a bunch of graduates who have nothing better to do. Performance-wise, there is no particular standout here, except maybe Bob Gallagher, who is able to make his presence felt in an ensemble and story that doesn’t necessarily rely on his acting prowess.
That said, “Midas” is a fairly enjoyable caper that knows what buttons to push to make a straightforward thriller. The stakes don’t feel high, which is why director TJ Noel-Sullivan is able to make do with a story that moves fast and gets to the finish line before you are bored with its many twists and turns. Composer Isabel Belen Guarco and original music by Anoyd must be lauded because they help build a hip tone for a story that passes by leaving a light touch on you.
