Kevin, Rob, and Sam are a group of friends with a game they call “Foolproof”: they meticulously plan out robberies just to prove that they could pull the jobs if they wanted to. But they never go through with them–until someone steals the plans for their latest stakeout, and gets away with hundreds of thousands of dollars in diamonds. At first they hope they can just keep quiet and let the whole thing blow over, but then the mastermind behind the stolen heist approaches them with an offer they can’t refuse: help him pull an even bigger robbery, or he’ll send their original plans, along with incriminating fingerprints, to the police.

As heist capers go, this isn’t bad. The screenplay is good: it explores the dynamics within the group very nicely, and uses shifting allegiances to provide tension right to the end. The excellent Ryan Reynolds plays Kevin fairly straight, which is appropriate for the role, but kept me expecting more deadpan humour than the film is geared to deliver. David Suchet as the criminal mastermind Leo Gillette prickles with diamond-hard menace, and often threatens to overwhelm the rest of the cast. This lack of balance–the question of whether it’s going to be funny or deadly serious–keeps the film from achieving a better result. (It’s still definitely not bad, though!)