In the last half-decade Stanley Tucci has been a source of near-inexhaustible on- screen delight, whether making friends with nonnas in his delightful cooking shows or smartly judged supporting turns in Conclave and The Devil Wears Prada 2. He is an actor well placed for a star vehicle of his own, and this one, Masterplan, sounds good on paper: an art heist fronted by the actor at his most debonair, flanked by a grandson of a French New Wave legend (Victor Belmondo, related to Breathless star Jean-Paul) and a buzzy breakout of The White Lotus (Simona Tabasco, winning in season two of Mike White’s comedy).
There’s a good bit of pulpy fun to have here, with double, triple and quadruple crossing, silly spy gadgetry which has been updated to include retina scan cloning and something called “VR intrusion”. As British criminal mastermind Roger, Tucci is game to send up aristo archetypes, even if his character often veers into parody. “I’m English,” his character says at one point. “‘Not bad’ is what I say when I orgasm.”
“Not bad” is what I say about Masterplan, a straight-to-streaming Amazon Prime offering that the studio is burying this weekend, seemingly choosing to focus on its just-released romantic drama Love of Your Life. Cybersecurity hacker Chiara (Tabasco) and explosives expert Jay (Belmondo) are Europe’s leading young criminals, working together remotely under aliases and using some kind of dark web app to sign up for new gigs. When they meet for the first time while breaking into a mansion on the shores of Italy’s Lake Geneva, sparks fly. “Sixty seconds, in and out,” promises Jay before Chiara snaps back playfully: “Don’t you use that name on Tinder?”
Just as you settle in for an evening of will-they-won’t-they hijinks, the film pulls a bait and switch. It turns out that the pair have been set up by Roger (Tucci), a veteran thief himself who has the “job of a lifetime” for them: a decade-in-the-making plan to make off with the Mona Lisa in a complicated scheme that involves drones, trickery, truffle-related espionage and a long-forgotten tunnel that conveniently exists under the Louvre. Also: they are in fact brother and sister, the result of an energetic mid-90s for Roger when he seduced their respective mothers.
You would think the fact that they are now siblings would put the kibosh on Jay and Chiara’s flirtation, but the film seems to feel otherwise. As the makeshift family relocate to Paris to put plans in motion for the heist, Chiara makes jokes about the size of her half-brother’s “hammer” and offers to settle squabbles through a round of strip poker, which strikes me as an unusual way for siblings to bond.
Despite the jokes that land with a thud, Masterplan is on safer ground when it sticks to the espionage. That is thanks to Thomas Vincent, the director, recapturing some of the juice he showed in the episodes of Bodyguard he directed, and I would rate Masterplan as a hair better than Role Play, the dull film he previously made for Amazon. When it isn’t trying to dazzle you with technology, Masterplan has a few twists on heist movie tropes (including a very clever use of a helium balloon) that avoids it feeling like a total retread of the Ocean’s 11 franchise, even if it doesn’t come close to matching the ingenuity of those films. And while the characters are too thinly drawn to make you care too much about them, I appreciated flourishes that nod to the female and gay male gaze, such as the diva moment where Tabasco’s character dons a platinum blond wig and the camera’s lustiness for Belmondo, who has a talent for losing his shirt.
Everything isn’t as it seems, and while the film should really end 30 minutes before it does, it has a few final tricks up its sleeve in the third act, as the characters begin to learn who they can really trust and Chiara’s hacking skills are put to the test once more. Even as the plot becomes increasingly ridiculous, ample bangs and explosions ensure that the nearly two-hour runtime doesn’t totally drag. The best you can offer Masterplan is faint praise: it could breeze by as company to your Sunday night takeout even if you will struggle to remember it a week later.
